American Protestants and U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Soviet Union During the Eisenhower
Administration: Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and G. Bromley Oxnam
by
AARON K. DAVIS
B.A., Northern Illinois University, 2008
M.A., Western Illinois University, 2010
AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History
College of Arts and Sciences
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Manhattan, Kansas
2017
Abstract
This dissertation considers American Protestant perceptions of U.S. foreign policy
directed toward Soviet Union during the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency (1953-1961). The
question of what a culture dominated by Protestant denominations thought of its global adversary
has not yet been sufficiently explored by scholars of either American religious history or
diplomatic history. Most scholars who deal with the intersection of religion and foreign policy
during the Eisenhower Administration tend to accentuate the close relationship that existed
between government policy and general religious attitudes. That is to say, a general, widespread
Protestant support of foreign policy objectives stands as the prevailing interpretation. Most
historians conclude that America’s Protestant church leaders—preachers, pastors, and bishops—
either actively supported government foreign policy objectives or sought to insert their own
stances into existing policy. More recently, historians have published monographs that further
explore Protestant Christianity with regard to foreign policy in the 1950s. By acknowledging the
different strands of Protestant Christianity, scholars have raised significant questions that have
heretofore gone unanswered. The primary question is the one that this dissertation seeks to
answer—how widespread was American Protestant denunciation of communism and,
simultaneously, how broad was American Protestant support for foreign policy objectives?
Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Garfield Bromley Oxnam represent the three most
prominent representatives of Protestant Christianity’s three major strands. These three
acknowledged opinion makers that serve as the focus of this dissertation were not uniform in
their perspectives of U.S. foreign policy, yet they all denounced communism and—to a degree—
supported America’s efforts to combat the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence throughout the
course of the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961). This conclusion helps explain the
tremendous perseverance of containment as a strategy by attributing its success, in part, to the
large, Protestant body of supporters that continued to sustain and encourage Washington’s
policies directed toward the Soviet Union.
American Protestants and U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Soviet Union During the Eisenhower
Administration: Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and G. Bromley Oxnam
by
AARON K. DAVIS
B.A., Northern Illinois University, 2008
M.A., Western Illinois University, 2010
A DISSERTATION
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History
College of Arts and Sciences
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Manhattan, Kansas
2017
Approved by:
Robert Linder
Major Professor
Abstract
This dissertation considers American Protestant perceptions of U.S. foreign policy
directed toward Soviet Union during the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency (1953-1961). The
question of what a culture dominated by Protestant denominations thought of its global adversary
has not yet been sufficiently explored by scholars of either American religious history or
diplomatic history. Most scholars who deal with the intersection of religion and foreign policy
during the Eisenhower Administration tend to accentuate the close relationship that existed
between government policy and general religious attitudes. That is to say, a general, widespread
Protestant support of foreign policy objectives stands as the prevailing interpretation. Most
historians conclude that America’s Protestant church leaders—preachers, pastors, and bishops—
either actively supported government foreign policy objectives or sought to insert their own
stances into existing policy. More recently, historians have published monographs that further
explore Protestant Christianity with regard to foreign policy in the 1950s. By acknowledging the
different strands of Protestant Christianity, scholars have raised significant questions that have
heretofore gone unanswered. The primary question is the one that this dissertation seeks to
answer—how widespread was American Protestant denunciation of communism and,
simultaneously, how broad was American Protestant support for foreign policy objectives?
Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Garfield Bromley Oxnam represent the three most
prominent representatives of Protestant Christianity’s three major strands. These three
acknowledged opinion makers that serve as the focus of this dissertation were not uniform in
their perspectives of U.S. foreign policy, yet they all denounced communism and—to a degree—
supported America’s efforts to combat the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence throughout the
course of the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961). This conclusion helps explain the
tremendous perseverance of containment as a strategy by attributing its success, in part, to the
large, Protestant body of supporters that continued to sustain and encourage Washington’s
policies directed toward the Soviet Union.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................... viii
Chapter 1—Introduction: America, Evangelical Christianity, and
Foreign Affairs in the 1950s......................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2—Civil Religion and America’s Protestant Landscape................................................25
Chapter 3—The Formative Upbringing of Giants........................................................................45
Chapter 4—Billy Graham’s Evangelical Christianity in the 1950s..............................................61
Chapter 5—Reinhold Niebuhr, Neo-Orthodoxy, and the Early Cold War...................................82
Chapter 6—G. Bromley Oxnam, Liberal Protestant Christianity, and the National Religion... 122
Chapter 7—Alphabet Soup: The Extension of Persuasion..........................................................158
Chapter 8—Foreign Policy and the Pulpit…...............................................................................184
Chapter 9—Conclusion: The Legacy of Protestants and the Cold War..................................... 203
Appendix A ................................................................................................................................ 210
Appendix B ................................................................................................................................ 215
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 218
vii
Acknowledgements
The work of a historian is often done in isolation. The finished product, however, is
rarely done without a tremendous amount of assistance. This dissertation is no exception. I wish
to express profound gratitude to my doctoral advisor, Professor Robert D. Linder, for teaching
me how to be a historian. I am also very grateful to Dr. Barclay Key for stoking my interest in
the fascinating history of America in the mid-twentieth century. I wish to thank my committee
members, Drs. Donald Mrozek, Louise Breen, Michael Krysko, and Laurie Johnson for their
encouragement and guidance. I must also acknowledge Dr. David Stone and Dr. Lou Falkner
Williams, respectively, for their early participation on my committee and also for their guidance
and instruction throughout my doctorate program. I would not have had as positive an experience
as I had digging through archives without the guidance of Zaloise Armstrong at the Eisenhower
Presidential Library and Archives, the friendly staff at the Presbyterian Historical Society, or the
efforts of the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room team. Like many works that
examine Billy Graham, I must acknowledge Bob Schuster and his tremendous archivists at the
Billy Graham Center Archives in Wheaton, Illinois. The professionalism and sense of urgency
that each of the above archival locations demonstrated was all the more impressive considering
the busy summer months that I chose to spend in their presence.
I thank Debbie Houk, Dr. Shelly Lemons, my co-panelist Timothy Grundmeier, and a
warm audience at the Mid-America Conference on History at McKendree University for
providing a welcoming atmosphere for me to present an early version of my research.
Additionally, I wish to thank Dr. Thomas A. Howard for helpful comments on a paper I
presented at the Conference on Faith and History Conference in Wenham, Massachusetts. I am
also thankful for the Kansas State University history department’s Brownbag lecture series. This
viii
annual event represented a collegial, helpful, and welcoming setting for me as I pitched the
outline and scope of my dissertation as it existed in an early stage. My cohort of fellow graduate
students at Kansas State University helped me grapple with seminar readings, prepare for
preliminary examinations, and realize that difficulties in our collective march toward the finish
line were not unique. I sincerely appreciate the friendship and encouragement of Bob Clark,
Robin Ottoson, Jennifer Zoebelein, Eric Dudley, Timothy Holgerson, and Joe Bailey.
Friends and family sustain projects such as this in immeasurable ways. I am so very
thankful for Chuck and Judy Wilson’s hospitality when they graciously invited me into their
home, offered transportation, fed me, and provided needed leisure time when I spent time
researching in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. A short comment would not suffice in
expressing my love, thanks, and affection for Ryne Davis, Tim Davis, Julie Davis, Kim Infante,
and Art Infante. I am the person that I am today because of you. My children are truly the light of
my life. While researching and writing this dissertation, Addysen, Elliot, Judah, and Linden were
the greatest distractions I could have hoped for. Most of all, I thank my wife, Natalie. I could not
imagine whom or where I would be without her love and support. It is to her and our children
that I dedicate this project.
ix
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: AMERICA, EVANGELICAL
CHRISTIANITY, AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN THE 1950s
On October 10, 1955, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) took his place at
the front of an American Legion audience at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Florida. He
spoke on a topic that he would continue to address in public settings for the last remaining years
of his life: communism versus democracy. He assured his audience that democracy would come
out on top of the then decade-old Cold War. In a speech that resembled many others that Dulles
delivered during his tenure as Secretary of State, he depicted both the Soviet Union and
American political systems in a way that resonated with his audience:
We have principles. Our productivity and our power do not rattle haphazardly
about the world. They are harnessed to basic moral principles. There is a school of
thought which claims that morality and foreign policy do not mix. This has never
been, is not, and I pray never will be, the American ideal. Diplomacy which is
divorced from morality also divorces the government from the people. Our people
can understand, and will support, policies which can be explained and understood
in moral terms. But policies based on carefully calculated expediency could never
be explained, and would never be understood.1
1
John Foster Dulles address before the American Legion in Miami, Florida. October 10,
1955. Box 43, Folder 3, Eleanor Lansing Dulles Papers, 1880-1984, Dwight D. Eisenhower
Archives, Abeline, KS. Historians differ in the exact dates that the Cold War encompassed.
While some claim that the American-Soviet posturing and planning that signified Cold War
relations between the two powers began before WWII ended, most agree that the Cold War
began in 1945. One, or a combination, of three significant events is referred to as the beginning
of the Cold War: the Yalta Conference in February, the ending of the war in Europe in May, the
bombing of Japan and the Potsdam Conference in July and August. Others look to 1947 as the
official beginning of the Cold War as the Truman Doctrine was announced, communists seized
power in Poland, and the National Security Act restructured America’s military and intelligence
agencies. Many historians point to the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 as the end of the Cold
1
Dulles’ speech characterized the climate and context of the Cold War (1945-1991) among
policymakers at the highest level. Since the Harry S. Truman Administration (1945-1953),
America’s foreign policy had pivoted from one concerned with the halt of the major Axis powers
that formed after the signing of the Tripartite Act (1940) to one focused on the containment of
the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.
The close of the Second World War (1939-1945) brought with it a restructuring of the
world stage. The United States stood alone as the sole world superpower. The nation acted as the
world’s policeman and safeguard of democracy. The Truman doctrine and Marshall Plan
conveyed America’s power and aspirations for a more peaceful, economically secure world.
Immediately after World War II formally ended, the difference between Soviet and Western
perspectives of the future emerged. Communism, and with it, the Soviet Union’s sphere of
influence, appeared to many Americans to spread rapidly. President Harry S. Truman (18841972) sought to combat Soviet aims and dampen the spread of communist and left-leaning states
with a strategy known now as containment. Economic and military security was not enough to
combat the great scourge of communism. To many, this divide between democracy’s capitalism
and communism was not centered on military strength, economic might, or even the persuasive
utilization of propaganda. It was faith. The distinguishing trait between democracy and
communism was the inherent difference in political and religious systems.
American foreign policy and religion became intertwined to a degree that was
unprecedented in the post-war years. The increase in prosperity, victory over the Axis powers,
and the explosion in population were certainly factors in this relationship. America’s guiding
War, while others look to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 that brought Boris Yeltsin
to the Russian presidency as the official close of the Cold War. I use the most widely cited set of
dates: 1945 to 1991.
2
foreign policy principles took on a religious tone that invoked heavy moralistic and spiritual
qualities while simultaneously reflecting the mood of many Americans at the time. This was
largely due to the religious mood of the early Cold War. The nation witnessed a sharp increase in
religious activity and the attention that some of America’s religious leaders commanded spoke to
the notion that many Americans identified their nation as wielding a special place in the world.
Indeed, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish Americans posted record numbers of church
membership and caught the bug of evangelism to a stunning degree in the 1950s.
Many scholars have noted this time period’s sharp increase in religious sentiment. More
recently, historians have given a greater deal of attention to the study of foreign relations and
religion in the early Cold War. However, most studies fail to properly take into account the
perspective of Protestant leaders on foreign policy. Instead, most studies declare the failure of
Christian leaders to insert their voices into government policy, or point to Christianity as a minor
influence on the shaping of official policy. This study assesses the perspectives of the standardbearers of the three largest and most influential strands of Protestant Christianity—NeoOrthodoxy, liberal Protestant Christianity, and evangelical Christianity—to determine their
stances, respectively, of U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. I specifically argue that the
three acknowledged opinion makers that serve as the focus of this dissertation were not uniform
in their perspectives of U.S. foreign policy, yet they all denounced communism and—to a
degree—supported America’s efforts to combat the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence
throughout the course of the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961). This conclusion helps
explain the tremendous perseverance of containment as a strategy by attributing its success, in
part, to the large, Protestant body of supporters that continued to sustain and encourage
Washington’s policies directed toward the Soviet Union. My argument demonstrates that many
3
Protestants supported a hawkish American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. This study
does not acknowledge that the three standard bearers of Protestant Christianity solely influenced
policymakers’ decisions in pursuing policies that held true to a containment approach. Rather,
this dissertation is a social, religious, and intellectual history of Protestant Christianity’s
reactions and responses to foreign affairs policies. These early Cold War years present a
combination of unique events—events that posed an entirely favorable climate for a sharp
increase of civil religion and a large base of Protestant Christian support for certain Cold War
policies. This thesis holds tremendous significance for our understanding of the Cold War,
American religion in the 1950s, and the relationship between church and state. It speaks to the
sudden popularity of civil religion in the 1950s and adds to the awareness of Protestant
Christianity’s role in American culture and politics.
Billy Graham (1918-), Reinhold Niebuhr (1893-1971), and Garfield Bromley Oxnam
(1891-1963) represent the three most prominent representatives of Protestant Christianity’s three
major strands. Graham was undoubtedly the face of evangelical Christianity from 1949 on.
Reinhold Niebuhr led the charge of Neo-Orthodox theology in America and Oxnam served as
one of the most recognizable and publicly active members of theologically liberal Protestant
denominations. These three figures were questioned on their understanding of American foreign
policy throughout the Eisenhower era. While Graham, Niebuhr, and Oxnam all expounded on the
attributes of America’s role in the world at times, Graham and Oxnam, namely, reserved their
pronouncements occasionally. Overall, the three collectively demonstrated highly loyal
descriptions of America vis a vis the Soviet Union and more often than not, supported the
policies of Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (1888-1959). The impact
that their perspectives wielded was due to the context of the times that they operated within.
4
Evangelical Christianity underwent a boom in America during the 1950s. It had
represented a prominent feature of American life throughout the nation’s history. Yet, the 1950s
were a time of unique evangelical growth. The United States population achieved its biggest
growth in history—from 150 million in 1950 to 180 million in 1960—as newly married couples
began what is now referred to as the baby boomer generation. On any given Sunday morning
between 1955 and 1958, almost half of all Americans were attending church—the highest
percentage in US history. During the 1950s, nationwide church membership grew at a faster rate
than the population, from 57 percent of the population in 1950 to 63.3 percent in 1960.2
This impressive increase in religious activity was not simply a boost in church
membership. The 1950s witnessed extraordinary expansion among most of the major Protestant
denominations and evangelical parachurch organizations. Evangelicals were growing in number
across college campus ministries. Bill Bright’s Campus Crusade for Christ and other
organizations, such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Navigators, spread from campus to
campus throughout the 1950s. Simultaneously, evangelical missionary efforts expanded. The
Christian Missionary Fellowship, founded in 1950, and World Vision, founded two years later,
sought to revive the great missionary endeavors of the nineteenth century with the then-rising
wave of evangelical growth. By 1960, Protestant missionaries totaled 29,000 and the number
sponsored by evangelical organizations rose from 44 percent to 65 percent.3
2
Carol Tucker, “The 1950s-Powerful Years for Religion.” USC News (June 16, 1997)
http://news.usc.edu/25835/The-1950s-Powerful-Years-for-Religion/ (accessed October 11,
2014). For church membership distribution in the 1950s, see William Peterson, “Religious
Statistics in the United States,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1 (Spring, 1962): 165178.
3
Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since
World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 181-182.
5
At the same time, America went through a transition in its approach to foreign affairs.
The early years of the Cold War wrought significant change on all levels of American society.
Many scholars agree that these years encompassed a period of increased civil religion in
America. Others point to the changing nature of foreign policy and race relations. Indeed, when
America emerged victorious from World War II, the nation stood as the lone world superpower.
In the wake of WWII, a collective, national fear of and opposition to Nazi Germany and the Axis
Powers was replaced by the fear of communism. Anticommunist fervor gripped many arenas of
public and private life. It was in this context that America’s foreign policy took on a different
scope. The U.S. government revised its foreign policy toward the Soviet Union to reflect the
postwar world. In America, policy centered upon confining the spread of communist influence,
and emerged as the dominant approach to Soviet Russia. The policy of containment, described
below, lay at the heart of American policy toward the Soviet Union from the late 1940s until the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Cold War Foreign Affairs
As America emerged from WWII, many government leaders recognized the U.S.S.R. as a
foe to be dealt with. The alliance that was forged for the sake of defeating the Axis Powers
immediately faltered at war’s end as disagreements over territory and influence arose. It was not
until American diplomat George F. Kennan’s (1904-2005) “long telegram” that he cabled from
his offices in Russia back to American government officials that U.S. statesmen began to
formally see the world in terms of spheres of influence.
Serving at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Kennan dispatched his eight-thousand-word
cable in February of 1946 and therein laid out the foundations for the future containment policy
6
that would serve as the United States’ approach to the Soviet Union for decades. Within this
Embassy report, Kennan provided a detailed analysis of Soviet aspirations and view of the world.
He concluded that Soviet and American values were fundamentally different and irreconcilable.
Kennan held that the United States needed to exert pressure in strategic locations for as long as it
took the Soviet Union to fail from its own flaws. Kennan’s assessment of the Soviet Union’s
strengths, weaknesses, goals, and values along with his prescription for appropriate policy caught
the attention of many policymakers in America. Not only did his work from the Embassy in
Moscow elevate Kennan from a consular official abroad to the head of the State Department’s
Policy Planning Staff, but Kennan’s articulation of the sources of Soviet conduct and suggested
policy approaches also set in motion the strategy of containment as a primary, national foreign
policy.4
The origins of American foreign policy in the 1950s actually began in the 1940s. Most
historians recognize that the Soviet Union and the United States of America envisioned the postWWII era differently before the Second World War came to a close. Indeed, Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1882-1945) and Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) realized that America and the Soviet
Union would not continue their war-induced alliance indefinitely. Secretary of the Navy James
V. Forrestal (1892-1949) considered Soviet ideology’s compatibility with democracy the same as
Nazism’s or Fascism’s compatibility with democracy. A change in American foreign policy that
reflected this vision did not occur, however, until 1950.5
4
Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and
Diplomacy (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2012), 422-423; William Inboden, Religion and
American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 17 and 37.
5
John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Books,
2012), 195.
7
Two years after the close of WWII, the term “containment” came to describe America’s
national foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and was outlined in a Foreign Affairs article,
“The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”6 Kennan authored this essay, which appeared under the pen
name “Mr. X.” Kennan saw foreign policy as primarily concerned with the security of the nation
and of the ability of the U.S. to advance the welfare of its people by ensuring a peaceful world
order. The policy of containment sought to restrict, or contain, the sphere of Soviet influence to
the borders of the U.S.S.R. Kennan is credited with forming the basis of U.S. foreign policy that
largely guided national security for over forty years, however, he never bothered to compose an
official policy that detailed the strategies and tactics in which containment would be executed.
This responsibility fell to the State Department and Defense Department, whose policy position
papers came to be known as National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68). This policy
effectively systemized containment and created a national policy that was based more on
perception of power than on anything else. Guided by NSC-68, American foreign policy
throughout the 1950s aimed to restrict Soviet influence from other parts of the world while
simultaneously furthering America’s democratic goals abroad.7
Historians have assessed the foreign policy of the immediate post-WWII and early Cold
War years with some regularity from that time period until today. The two prevailing schools of
thought on America’s Cold War foreign policy come from historian William Appleman Williams
(1921-1990) and Kennan. Most historians find Williams’ and Kennan’s interpretations the most
6
George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25 (July 1947):
566-582.
7
Many historians have attested to the significance of this report for America’s next forty
years of foreign policy. For example, historian Andrew Preston cites this document as “one of
the most important documents in American diplomatic history,” characterized by “the libertarian
impulse of the Reformed Protestant tradition.” Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of
Faith, 439.
8
dominant views of American foreign policy. Williams essentially finds a shared ideology among
policymakers as a beneficial facet. For the purposes of this dissertation, I will follow historian
Michael Hunt’s definition of ideology: “An interrelated set of convictions or assumptions that
reduces the complexities of a particular slice of reality to easily comprehensible terms and
suggests appropriate ways of dealing with that reality.”8
George Kennan considered ideology a bad thing in policy. He despised legalism and
moralism, opting for “realism” or a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. Kennan dealt with the
reality of any given situation and worked with the facts at large rather than theory or idealism.
Cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) posed a third leading perspective of
ideology. This consensus-school anthropoligist argued that ideology stemmed from and was
maintained by society’s culture. Though he did not offer a prescription for policymaking, he
illuminated the power that one nation’s larger public wields in shaping and influencing official
government policies. Together, these scholars maintained competing views of foreign policy. All
three, along with the historians who studied their interpretations, though, largely agreed with the
American policy of containment as feasible. Indeed, the historiography of America’s early Cold
War years contains several differing perspectives of US foreign policy. 9
8
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1987), xi.
9
Historian Michael Hunt finds the economic and ideological approach of William
Appleman Williams along with the moralistic and realistic approach of George Kennan narrow
and anemic in explaining how ideology and foreign policy interact. Hunt finds U.S. foreign
policy best understood as a three-part system centered upon the self-congratulatory promotion of
liberty abroad, the tendency to view others on the basis of a racial hierarchy, and a profound
antipathy to social revolution, see Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1987). Walter LaFeber despises the legalistic and moralistic approach
of Kennan and points out Kennan’s irony in having an anti-ideology view of foreign policy.
Kennan argues, in fact, for a realist ideology that is to be led by policy makers competent and
skilled enough to craft national policies. LaFeber finds the same link between domestic and
9
One of the most fascinating points that reappears in several historical studies is the
characterization of the Cold War. Many historians have concluded the Cold War was a religious
war. The Cold War was waged on many fronts that were completely irreligious. However, the
crafting of actual policy typically included references to the different religious components of
America and the Soviet Union. To describe communism as “atheistic” or “godless” was an
exercise that was common at all levels of American society. Collective opposition to
communism acted as a cohesive gel to policymakers and the American public alike. Many
Americans saw the Cold War struggle between communism and capitalism as nothing less than a
religious struggle between good and evil. 10
Defining Evangelical Christianity
The meaning behind terms such as “evangelical,” “evangelicalism,” and “Evangelical
Christianity” is often convoluted. In several cases, “evangelicalism” and “Evangelical
Christianity” are used interchangeably. I have chosen to use “Evangelical Christianity” because
of its greater historical meaning and also because it clarifies the subject better than the too-often
employed “evangelicalism.” Evangelical Christianity is identifiable by the two urges that it
fosters in evangelicals: (1) the desire to spread the “good news” of the gospel, and (2) the desire
to improve society. Evangelicals historically have held a number of theological beliefs in
common: (1) the Bible is the ultimate authority in religious life; (2) Jesus Christ is God
incarnate; and (3) salvation is gained through a personal faith in Jesus Christ alone through his
foreign policies that Williams does, see Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War,
1945-1996 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997).
10
Many scholars have described the Cold War as a religious war. For example, William
Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960, 2; Andrew Preston, Sword of the
Spirit, Shield of Faith, 412-417; Mike Grimshaw, “Encountering Religion: Encounter, Religion,
and the Cultural Cold War, 1957-1967.” History of Religions 51 (August 2011): 31-58.
10
atoning and sacrificial death on the cross. This salvation leads to a life that is spiritually and
morally transformed. These three beliefs describe Evangelical Christianity in the most basic,
historical sense.11
Evangelical Christianity has taken on different forms in different time periods and
contexts. In America, it stretches back to European settlement. Evangelical Christianity
flourished until a period of decay between 1700 and 1725. The First Great Awakening (17301760), led by the fiery preaching of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards sparked a national
revival that burned until 1775. With the American Revolution came religious decline. Until the
turn of the century, the religious mood in America lingered in the aftermath of substantial
vitality. With the beginning of the nineteenth century, came the Second Great Awakening (18001860). This period encompassed all of the 1800s until, again, the outbreak of war led to religious
decline. Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists expanded in an evangelical golden age that saw
membership rolls swell as a result of methods such as itinerant preaching and revival meetings
which invoked the piety, salvation, and “rebirth” of millions across the country. Indeed, the
greatest reform movements of the nineteenth century—abolition, temperance, women’s rights,
and the focus on eradicating sexual sin—were a direct outgrowth of the Second Great
Awakening.12
From the American Civil War (1861-1865) to the present, America’s religious history has
taken on a trajectory of twists and turns comparable to its earlier phases. The Second Great
Awakening ended as the nation became embroiled in civil war. This religious decline lasted
11
Richard Pierard and Robert Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (Grand Rapids,
MI: Academie Books, 1988), 16 and 320n.
12
Robert Azbug, Cosmos Crumbling: Antebellum Reform and the Religious Imagination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
11
through the years recognized today as Reconstruction (1865-1877). From 1877 through 1890,
America underwent a period of new, urban revivalism. This period gave way to an era of the
Protestant establishment during an age of new immigrants. This Protestant establishment took
it’s place in American society at the same time as immigrants from mostly European countries,
though Asian and Latin American immigrants factored in, came to the United States in
staggering numbers.
Between the close of WWI and the most intense years of the Civil Rights Movement, or
1918-1965, America’s religious history underwent a period of Fundamentalist-Modernist
controversy and the subsequent dominance of the American religious landscape by the
theologically liberal establishment. Considering that the range of years that this study focuses on
falls within this period of theologically liberal Protestant ascendancy, this context will be
explained in more thorough detail later. Beyond 1965, a period of religious ferment and
evangelical resurgence occurred. The shape of America’s evangelical construction changed in
the face of political and military actions in the 1960s and 1970s. It changed again in the 1980s
and 1990s with challenges to education policy, family planning, women’s roles in society,
conservative politics, and Middle Eastern affairs. Overall, America’s religious history is one that
lacks anything close to a linear path through centuries of American history.
Eisenhower’s Civil Religion
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was in touch with the religious mood of Americans
throughout his two terms in office. His faith was ecumenical and general, which struck a
collective cord with Americans in a large variety of churches. Eisenhower’s faith was
undoubtedly sincere, and he capitalized on his religious role once in the White House.
12
Once in office, Eisenhower took on his national, religious role with relative ease. Despite
a childhood grounded in religious study and prayer, there is little to suggest that Eisenhower was
preoccupied with religious matters before World War II. Born in Texas, the Eisenhower family
moved to Abilene, Kansas, when Dwight was only a few months old. As a child, young Dwight’s
paternal grandfather was a successful farmer and preacher among the River Brethren, a small,
Mennonite offshoot that originated after 1775 around the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.
Known today as the Brethren in Christ, this small sect incorporated Wesleyan perfectionism with
pietistic religion and an Anabaptist view of the church and discipleship. Later in life, his mother
joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, Eisenhower never attended any church regularly after
his teen years, despite twice daily, family Bible readings as a boy.13
Eisenhower fit the role of America’s pastoral figure well. He joined the National
Presbyterian Church after it’s pastor, Dr. Edward L.R. Elson, a former Army chaplain of his
acquaintance from WWII in Europe, heavily courted Eisenhower’s membership. From the point
of his initial inauguration on, Eisenhower frequently linked spiritual renewal with national
renewal, appealed to God’s providence, and employed a civic faith that endeared many
American’s to the Eisenhower Administration’s goals and aspirations.
The civil religion that Eisenhower employed was not new. Elected officials had appealed
to a higher deity, or God, since the presidency of George Washington. Eisenhower used civil
religion, though, in a way that was highly cognizant of the times. The greatest difference
between civil religion and nationalism is the fact that civil religion does not demand one’s
highest allegiance. One can participate in civil religion if he or she believes in God. Eisenhower
13
Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency, 184-185 and 328n4; Inboden,
Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment, 264-265; Preston,
Sword of the Spirit, 442-443.
13
combined general, religious belief with American perspectives of communism and historically
long-existing perspectives of the nation’s special place or purpose in the world that produced a
powerful civil religion.
The definition of “civil religion” has been debated since sociologist Robert Bellah’s
landmark article published in 1967 provoked an increase in discussion on the topic.14 Many
scholars—sociologists, historians, political scientists, and anthropologists—have debated the
term ever since. This dissertation uses historians Richard Pierard and Robert Linder’s definition:
The widespread acceptance by a people of perceived religio-political traits
regarding their nation’s history and destiny. It relates their society to the realm of
ultimate meaning and provides the vision which ties the nation together as an
integrated whole. It is the “operative religion” of a society—the collection of
beliefs, values, rites, ceremonies, and symbols which together give sacred
meaning to the ongoing political life of the community and provide it with an
overarching sense of unity above and beyond all internal conflicts and
differences.15
In American society throughout the 1950s, several forms of civil religion were acted out
in many different ways. The display of the American flag inside of churches, elected officials’
public calls for divine favor and intervention, prayers for military success, inserting “In God We
Trust” on coinage, and adding “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, all represented
manifestations of civil religion in the Eisenhower years.
The Three Faces of Protestant Christianity
Civil religion was present in many facets of American society. The makeup of America’s
religious population was not as cohesive as the description of civil religion’s presence might
14
15
Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96 (Winter 1967): 1-21.
Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency, 22-23.
14
suggest. Several issues divided Protestant Christianity along church, denominational, theological,
or regional lines. To be sure, the history of American Protestant Christianity contains attributes
that are constant, enduring themes. However, this history is also fluid and marked by change.
The leading theological and denominational structures shuffled continually over four centuries
due to the context of each generation’s era. Great awakenings, revivals, circuit riding, towering
evangelical figures, competing theological perspectives, denominational splits and mergers,
Biblical criticism, and Darwinism account for a small fraction of the challenges and victories that
Protestant Christianity in America has experienced. Considering the long and complex history of
Protestant Christianity in America, the point must be made for the purposes of this dissertation
that certain terms and concepts related to religion in America during the mid-twentieth century
did not hold the same meaning as they did during the mid-nineteenth century or mid-eighteenth
century.
The terms that I use are specific to the time period. Evangelical, liberal Christianity, and
Neo-Orthodoxy are terms that carried certain connotations in the 1940s and 1950s. A definition
of terms is appropriate to establish clarity. Neo-Orthodoxy is a theological perspective that
emerged in the twentieth-century as a direct result of theologians’ disillusionment with liberal
theology and the destruction of World War I (1914-1919). This theology was developed in the
aftermath of WWI by Swiss theologians Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Emil Brunner (1899-1966),
though Barth’s 1919 publication, Commentary on Romans represented the primary work to push
back against liberal Protestant theology. Neo-Orthodoxy sought to recover the insights and
themes of the Protestant Reformation while at the same time adjusting to Biblical criticism and
modern science. Neo-Orthodoxy represented a rejection of theological liberalism and a return to
Biblical authority.
15
Neo-Orthodoxy differed from theological conservatism. While theological conservatives
believed that the Bible was the Word of God, Neo-Orthodoxy held that the Bible contained the
Word of God. Neo-Orthodoxy’s main thrusts were its emphasis on sin and guilt, the
transcendence of God, and the uniqueness of Christ. Barth and Brunner are credited with NeoOrthodoxy’s conception, however, it was Niebuhr who led the rising numbers of disillusioned,
theological liberals to subscribe to the major tenets of Neo-Orthodox theology.16
Reinhold Niebuhr, Garfield Bromley Oxnam, and Billy Graham have been carefully
selected to represent Neo-Orthodoxy, liberal Protestant Christianity, and evangelical Christianity,
respectively. These three men represent the standard-bearers of their respective Christian
category. This dissertation ultimately questions American Protestants’ views of United States’
foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. These three individuals represent the three most
dominant sections of Protestant Christianity in America during the Eisenhower Administration.
Reinhold Niebuhr was the face of Neo-Orthodoxy in America throughout the 1950s. He
was a well-known figure among intellectuals decades before he reached his peak in the 1940s
and 1950s. Long before moving to his post at Union Theological Seminary in New York,
Niebuhr operated as a pacifist and theologically liberal pastor at the Bethel Evangelical Church
in Detroit Michigan until 1928. During this time, Niebuhr wrote Moral Man and Immoral
Society, which began his break from the social gospel and from liberal theology. From roughly
the point of this book’s publication (1932) onward, Niebuhr rejected liberal theology and
embraced the crisis theology of Neo-Orthodoxy.
16
For further detail on Neo-Orthodoxy, see Andrew Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday
Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of
Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 197n2.
16
Niebuhr’s prolific output garnered a name for himself in academic circles. Three of his
twenty-one books, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Nature and Destiny of Man
(1941), and The Irony of American History (1952) propelled Niebuhr to the ranks of a respected,
tenured academic whose perspectives carried much weight with a generation in the throes of
change in the early Cold War. Indeed, scholars of political philosophy, theology, and history
frequently looked to Niebuhr for his assessments of society. In total, Niebuhr authored more than
2,600 articles in publications such as The Nation, New Republic, The New Leader, Christian
Century, The Progressive, Foreign Affairs, The Journal of Religion, Harvard Business Review,
and Atlantic Monthly. He contributed opinion articles to leading newspapers and founded two
periodicals, Christianity and Crisis and Christianity and Society. Additionally, Niebuhr
contributed to 126 books. Yet it is not Niebuhr’s overwhelming rate of publication that makes
him the standard bearer of Neo-Orthodoxy in the 1950s. His rigorous writing-life merely
accounts for a portion of this status.
Niebuhr had a hand—and an influence—in a number of organizations. He participated in
many societies, leagues, and fellowships: the YMCA, the Federal Council of Churches, the
Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, the Fellowship of Socialist Christians, the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, the League for Independent Political Action, the Socialist Party of New York, the
editorial advisory board of the quarterly Armenian Affairs, and the Foreign Policy Commission
of the Americans for Democratic Action to name some of the groups Niebuhr worked with. In
most cases, Niebuhr rose to a position of leadership in those organizations to which he devoted
his time.
Niebuhr also maintained ongoing correspondence with numerous leading figures. He
traded letters, telephone calls, and conversations in person with Harvard President James B.
17
Conant (1893-1978), Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the Washington
D.C. National Presbyterian Church pastor Edward Elson (1906-1993), Hans J. Morgenthau
(1904-1980), Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), George Kennan, Norman Thomas (1884-1968),
Senator Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978), evangelist Sherwood Eddy (1871-1963), John Foster
Dulles, and W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963), just to name some of the more prominent figures of the
1950s. Niebuhr was seemingly everywhere, all of the time. One must remember that he wrote,
participated in a number of organizations, and continued correspondence with dozens of people
simultaneously while working as professor of Christian ethics at Union from 1928 to 1960.
Niebuhr’s dedication to his academic post frequently had him lecturing in large classrooms and
theaters, instructing students in his New York apartment, preaching in Union’s chapel,
participating in student and youth gatherings along the East Coast and Midwest, and serving
certain commitments to his department and Union Seminary President Henry Sloan Coffin
(1877-1954).17 Altogether, Niebuhr wrote, spoke, and taught at a furious pace. He articulated
ideas that offered a unique perspective on American affairs. It is for all of the examples above
combined that Niebuhr stands out as the leading Neo-Orthodox figure in America during
Eisenhower’s presidency.
Billy Graham represented the face of Evangelical Christianity in the 1950s. His emphasis
on conversion to Christ during his many international revivals launched his name and his Billy
Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) organization to dizzying heights of popularity. Over
the course of his life, Graham has preached, in person, to over 200 million people in more than
17
For more information on Niebuhr’s life and professional accomplishments, see Richard
Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row Publishers, 1987),
and Michael G. Thompson, “An Exception to Exceptionalism: A Reflection on Reinhold
Niebuhr’s Vision of “Prophetic” Christianity and the Problem of Religion and U.S. Foreign
Policy.” American Quarterly 59 (September, 2007): 833-855.
18
185 countries. This does not include hundreds of millions more on radio, film, and television.
Graham was comfortable with national leaders from the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961)
through the Gerald Ford Administration (1974-1977), and provided religious leadership and
support to presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Moreover, Graham’s
revivals brought him international fame.
Graham’s message took on a sense of urgency to many of his listeners as he infused the
immediate threat of communism into his sermons in the 1940s and 1950s. During his 1949
revival in Los Angeles, Graham repeatedly referenced Harry S. Truman’s announcement that
Russians had successfully developed and tested an atomic bomb. In Los Angeles in 1949,
Graham featured the divide between communism and the West as a means of illustrating the real
and imminent threat that evil posed as well as in other revivals across New England, South
Carolina, Washington, D.C., and London in the early 1950s. Graham stressed conversion to
packed audiences using methods that illustrated his awareness of global events. Graham attracted
attention because of his abilities to offer hope and cohesion through religious revivals to a
vulnerable and anxious nation. His radio program, The Hour of Decision, reached a peak of
1,200 stations across America before being converted into a television show. In 1955, Graham’s
BGEA created Christianity Today, which quickly rose to the top of evangelical journals. It
continues to this day as the leading publication for evangelical Christians. Graham’s career is
one of the most impressive of any American evangelical leader in any age of American history.18
18
For a concise overview of Graham’s message and the channels that the preacher used
to communicate, see Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a
Nation (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 2-31 and 231234.
19
Graham’s legacy is defined by the multitudes of people across the world who came to
Christ as a direct result of Graham’s preaching. He has also been recognized by a number groups
and organizations for his evangelistic efforts. His awards include: the Ronald Reagan
Presidential Foundation Freedom Award, the Congressional Gold Medal, the Templeton
Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion, and the Speaker of the Year Award. He was also
bestowed with the Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire and
recognized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for promoting understanding
between faiths. Additionally, Graham has been honored with a structure, the Billy Graham
Center, at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
Identifying one individual as the stand-alone representative of liberal Christianity in the
1950s is a difficult task. It has proven a conundrum to other historians.19 Indeed, the 1950s
presented a rare picture of American Protestant Christianity. Due to many factors that spanned
the nation, including a general search for meaning and spiritual assurance, a desire for stability
following a tragic world war, and the popularity of Billy Graham’s rallies and revivals,
evangelical growth intensified. At the same time, the national mood of civil religion was greatly
heightened. Additionally, the theological pull to the left was expressed across the country.
Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam best represents this large swath of theologically
liberal Protestants. Other theologically liberal Christians come to mind as possible candidates for
this title: Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) was arguably the best-known pastor in the 1920s
19
For example, Neo-Orthodoxy, liberal Christianity, and Evangelical Christianity were
identified by Elisha Coffman as the leading sectors of Protestant Christianity. Coffman depicts
Niebuhr as Neo-Orthodoxy’s standard-bearer and Graham as the face of “evangelicalism,” yet
does not cite one individual as representative of liberal Christianity, see Elisha Coffman, The
Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 7-12.
20
and 1930s. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) made the social gospel a part of American
Christianity more so than any other individual. Even John Foster Dulles expressed serious
conviction with regard to his Presbyterian faith. Yet these individuals fall outside of the scope of
this dissertation. Fosdick and Rauschenbusch, respectively, were at the peaks of their respective
public and religious lives before the scope of this study. Dulles had too much of a hand in
foreign affairs to examine, as he often directly oversaw official American foreign policy.
During the Eisenhower Administration, Oxnam served as one of the main leaders of the
Methodist Church. His selection as the standard-bearer of liberal Protestant Christianity does not
admit that the Methodist Church was the most liberal. Rather, Oxnam himself stands out as the
most recognizable, active liberal Protestant leader with regard to America’s foreign policy. The
Methodist Church was, in the 1950s, the largest Protestant denomination in the country and it
retained a large network of churches, colleges, hospitals, and seminaries. In the 1950s, this
extensive reach was unparalleled in scope and size. The Methodist Church continued to be the
largest single Protestant group until the Southern Baptist Convention, although not a
denomination, surpassed it in 1967 after nearly three decades of phenomenal growth.20 Oxnam
had moved up from within the church rapidly while maintaining a strong ecumenical presence
within a series of multi-church organizations. He worked closely with the Federal Council of
Churches (FCC) and continued his service after it became the National Council of Churches
(NCC). He also led the World Council of Churches (WCC), serving as president of the FCC and
WCC. He was outspoken in his denunciation of communism and also of America’s extremism in
combating it at home. His testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee
20
Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion, 186.
21
(HUAC) garnered him more attention from his fellow theologically liberal Protestants and the
country at large.
Oxnam had an eclectic, well-traveled résumé. After finishing school at the University of
Southern California and seminary at Boston University, Oxnam served as a pastor in Los
Angeles. He went on to teach at Boston University’s School of Theology before taking his post
as the president of DePauw University. He then embarked on a series of travels overseas as
itinerant preacher Sherwood Eddy’s (1871-1963) secretary. He returned to the United States to
assume the role of Methodist Bishop of Omaha between 1936 and 1939. After spending a
majority of his time serving the nation during World War II in several religious roles, Oxnam led
the FCC for a number of years. He was the Methodist Bishop of the Boston area from 1939
through 1944, of New York from 1944 through 1952, and then finally of the Washington, D.C.
area from 1952 through 1960.
Oxnam was involved in many international and ecumenical efforts over the course of his
life. By the time Eisenhower was in office, Oxnam had fulfilled an appointment by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to visit the Mediterranean Theater and the European Theater of operations during
World War II. He had also served an appointment by Secretary James Forrestal as a member of
the Secretary of the Navy’s Civilian Advisory Committee and received a certificate of
appreciation from the Navy for his services during World War II. Oxnam was awarded the Order
of the Phoenix by the King of Greece and represented a large group of American churches at the
enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury (1945). Additionally, Oxnam was appointed as a
member of the President’s Commission on Higher Education (1946-1948) and chaired a
commission to study postwar religious conditions in Germany (1945). His most recognizable
role was as Secretary of the Council of Bishops for the Methodist Church. During the course of
22
the 1950s, Oxnam represented the prototypical theologically liberal Methodist. In the
forthcoming chapters, Oxnam’s role as the major voice behind theologically liberal Protestants is
made clear.21
Methodology
The methodological approach this dissertation will use for analyzing Niebuhr’s,
Graham’s, and Oxnam’s perspectives on American foreign policy involves a combination of
social history, intellectual history, and literary analysis of the available historical evidence. Using
these approaches provides insight into a subject that can be approached from many angles. The
majority of scholarly attention that is devoted to this subject matter has, until recently, dealt
solely with foreign affairs or religion. With the publication of recent studies that take aim at the
intersection of foreign affairs and religion during Eisenhower’s Administration, the perspectives
of nationally recognized leaders of Protestant strands have either been ignored or not given
thorough treatment. While the recent trend to accentuate the more pacifist and peace-oriented
approaches of a minority of America’s Protestants highlights the notion that Protestant cold
warriors did not represent the entirety of America’s Protestant body, the failure to gauge the
great majority of American Protestants’ attitudes toward policy leaves several lingering
questions. Social and intellectual approaches to this large segment of the American public bring
forth greater understanding of America’s support for the foreign policies of the 1950s. These
approaches also untangle a knotty legacy of moral, ethical, and state-focused ideals. The
erudition and world perspective of each of these three figures speak directly to American
attitudes in the 1950s. Literary analyses provide a closer look at the pronouncements of Niebuhr,
Graham, and Oxnam.
21
G. Bromley Oxnam, I Protest (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 38.
23
The following chapter serves as an assessment of the growth of civil religion and the
context of America’s Protestant structure between the 1940s and the end of the Eisenhower
Administration. Chapter 3 traces the upbringing of Graham, Niebuhr, and Oxnam in order to
better understand their formative years and to identify the basis of their thought in adulthood.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters cover Graham, Niebuhr, and Oxnam, respectively. Their
lives and actions are considered, yet the greatest amount of attention is given to their official and
unofficial views of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1961.
Chapters 7 and 8 take account of the extensive influence that Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam
wielded. These two chapters describe the number of organizations that each man either led or in
which they participated. These two chapters also examine the level of church support for U.S.
foreign policy objectives. The final chapter concludes the dissertation and analyzes the legacies
of Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam along with the impact that their efforts had within the larger
progression of national foreign policy in the 1950s.
24
CHAPTER 2
CIVIL RELIGION AND AMERICA’S PROTESTANT
LANDSCAPE
The state of American Protestant Christianity in the 1950s was one of transition,
alteration, and ascendancy. The liberal theology that came to dominate most Protestant Christian
denominations had reached its peak and swollen membership rolls had not yet entered into the
decline that set in between the 1960s and 1980s. Indeed, the dominant narrative in American
religious history in recent years has been one centered on the political mobilization of religious
conservatives and the insurgent, growing political and religious conservative mood in America.
This crucial time period between the Truman and Kennedy Administrations (1945-1963) offers
an era of transition between the crisis that theological (and political) liberals faced following
WWI and the resurgence of conservative Protestant Christianity following the most intense years
of the Vietnam War (1955-1975). In the 1950s, Neo-Orthodoxy cut to the heart of the crisis of
liberal theology while evangelical Christianity restored the promise of salvation to multitudes of
Americans living in an age of anxiety.
Historians who take account of the heyday of liberal Christianity often refer to churches
and seminaries in their charting the decline of liberal theology. Scholarly work tends to focus on
theologically liberal Protestant’s Enlightenment roots, engagement with Darwinism,
postmillennialism, and faith in humanity’s ability to persevere, overcome, and realize progress.
This same standard narrative tends to focus on the successes of the Social Gospel and emphasize
theologically liberal Protestants’ faith in human nature and progress. As many disheartened
25
theological liberals realized that they could not induce a one-thousand year period of peace to
usher in Christ’s return or perfect humanity in the face of two world wars, Neo-Orthodox
theological arguments and evangelical calls for repentance and renewal took hold of American
churchgoers’ ears.
In addition to the changing nature of America’s theological belief structures, the context
of the 1950s greatly influenced the trajectory of America’s religious life. The Cold War was
waged with increasingly religious characterizations. The identification of good and evil was
made abundantly clear by America’s elected officials and preachers used the perilous state of
foreign affairs with Soviet Russia frequently in their sermons and characterizations of the times.
Protestant Christianity in the 1950s
In the decade following WWII, Protestant leadership wielded extensive public influence.
Many Protestant leaders also held similar views on communism, Soviet Russia, and U.S. foreign
policy. However, internal fissures revealed that not all Protestant denominations were
harmonious in their perspectives of religion or politics. While many primarily theologically
liberal denominations supported international cooperation through economic aid and the
encouragement of multinational institutions, as they had for decades, other conservative, neoorthodox, and evangelical church leaders forwarded opposing suggestions for future American
action.1 Scholars have cited these political and theological disputes among several denominations
as evidence of the inability of Protestant leaders to forge a united front against communism. This
1
For example, Cambridge historian Andrew Preston argues that religion and American
ideology in the Cold War was not nationalistic, militant, and obsessed with anti-communism.
Preston contends that mainline Protestants challenged containment through calls for nuclear and
conventional disarmament, decolonization, higher levels of foreign aid, and unconditional
dialogue with the Soviet Union, see Andrew Preston, “Peripheral Visions: American Mainline
Protestants and the Global Cold War.” Cold War History 13 (February, 2013): 109-130.
26
monolithic support from America’s religious community is something that both government and
religious leaders desperately desired.2
By the 1950s, many Protestant denominations shared similar theologically liberal
qualities as a result of several factors. The largest of these denominations had attained such hefty
sizes in membership, that they were too respectable to combat the pressures of an increasingly
secular society. That is, rather than lose the clout and standing that they had accumulated over
the course of several generations, many denominations embraced the socially and theologically
liberal stances that were evident across pockets of greater American society. These theologically
liberal churches, sometimes referred to as the “mainline” churches, continued to move left on the
theological spectrum as they further solidified liberal theology in their seminaries and churches,
expanded their numbers of schools and hospitals, and sought to continue their rate of growth and
acceptance across the country.
Protestant churches in the 1950s also inherited the circumstances of their forbearers. By
the 1950s, a significant shift had occurred in many of the social responsibilities of American
churches. Due to the executive and legislative impulses of many progressive and New Deal
politicians, the United States government had subsumed many roles that had previously been
tended to by churches. Indeed, care for the poorest, most helpless of society during the Great
Depression—the oldest and youngest, laborers and the disabled—was gradually moved from the
church to the state. The self-constructed notion of respectability, the shift in social care from
church to government, and the spread of theological liberalism, then, had vastly changed the
2
William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of
Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 22; Elisha Coffman, The
Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 7; Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and
Diplomacy (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2012), 415, 467-469.
27
nature and structure of many American Protestant churches. The effects of these three forces had
also changed the nature of American society.3
The term “mainline” stems from its reference to the railroad industry. The word is
representative of an old railway line that ran along the east coast of the country to the elite,
northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia. In time, this term also came to describe the “mainliners”
of society, or the well-to-do, old-moneyed elite of society. Scholarship that invokes the term
frequently utilizes it to depict a set of Protestant, Christian denominations. There are several
variations of this list, but it typically includes the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Disciples of
Christ, United Methodist Church, Congregational Church (now included with the United Church
of Christ), Episcopal Church, northern Baptist churches, and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Just as there is ambiguity surrounding exactly which denominations comprise this “mainline” set
of churches, confusion exists over exactly what makes certain denominations candidates for the
title. Scholars most often cite practices and theological beliefs such as ecumenism, activism,
liberalism, and modernism as defining characteristics of “mainline” churches, yet these
denominations all differ in some respect with the beliefs and practices that they each exhibit.4
Theologically liberal churches had come to dominate the face of the American Protestant
landscape. These denominations underwent a period of transformation from the period of
Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 through the 1920s. During this
span of time, Christians were forced to deal with the questions that scientific advancement,
higher criticism of the Bible, and the importation of European methods of university instruction
3
Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 466.
For a discussion of the term “mainline,” and the denominations that comprised it, see
Elisha Coffman, The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline, 1-6; and George
M. Marsden, Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
(New York: Basic Books, 2014), 98-99.
4
28
brought to bear. Many churches moved away from literal readings of the Bible and opted for
broader, more liberal readings of scripture following the modernist-fundamentalist controversy
that many claim reached its climax in the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee.5
During this trial that centered upon the teaching of evolution in high-school science
classes, the great majority of Americans were given the opportunity to follow court proceedings
through updates, descriptions, and interviews on the radio. This form of communication was both
new and widespread and it allowed the trial to reach an elevated level of importance. Despite
winning the nationally reported trial, three-time presidential candidate and “Cross of Gold”
speaker William Jennings Bryan succumbed to the humiliation and bullying of attorney Clarence
Darrow in what many described as the death knell for fundamentalist Christians. From the 1920s
onward, fundamentalist Christians largely pulled away from society as church-founded
universities severed ties with their denominational affiliations, removed mandatory attendance
for chapel services, and brought theologically liberal faculty aboard.6
5
See Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing
Debate Over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 3-8, 222-224, and 267-278;
David Mislin, Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the
Secular Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 3-9; and George M. Marsden,
Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism,
1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 184-188.
6
For a discussion of universities moving away from the churches that founded them, see
James Burtchaell, The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from
their Christian Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company,
1998); George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Joel Carpenter, Revive Us
Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 19-23.
29
The Methodist Church
The Methodist Church represented one of the largest Protestant denominations in the
1950s. Statistics from the years during and after World War II reveal the extent of Methodism’s
reach. At that time, the Methodist Church controlled nine universities, sixty-nine colleges, nine
schools of theology, twenty-five junior colleges, fourteen secondary schools, and five other
miscellaneous institutions. Together, these 131 institutions of education contained 117,000
students that were taught by a faculty of 6,000. The annual budget for these collective Methodist
institutions was $42,000,000. To make this expansive network of Methodist instruction possible,
the Methodist Church had invested more than $400,000,000 in equipment, campus material, and
buildings.7
The history of Methodist growth in the United States is a profound story of success and
rapid expansion. Though the Methodist presence in America stretches far earlier, the nineteenth
century witnessed an explosion in church membership at the heels of itinerant preaching, the use
of common, everyday language in sermons, and the employment of circuit-riding tactics across
the then-continually expanding South. Between 1800 and 1860, Methodists grew in number from
the tens of thousands to nearly two million. The Second Great Awakening, which occurred
during this period of growth, brought with it a number of reform movements that restructured the
face of American religious and secular life while simultaneously bolstering the fabric of the
American religious community.
Methodism continued to expand through the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (18771917), taking a turn toward theological liberalism in the early twentieth-century at the same time
7
Robert Moats Miller, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism
(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990), 291-292.
30
as most other large Protestant denominations. Embracing the liberal tendencies of American
society fueled Methodism’s growth as membership rolls swelled from over four million in 1900
to over ten million by the close of the 1950s. In many ways, Methodists reflected the larger
American society. Their church hierarchy was structured in a democratic manner. This structure
neatly paralleled America’s political structure. By the time of the 1950s, the Methodist Church
was an overwhelmingly “white” denomination. In its first years, American Methodism had
counted a very large African-American contingent in its membership. As early as the nineteenth
century, however, discriminatory practices in America’s northern cities led many black
Methodists to leave the church and organize their own denominations. By 1940, AfricanAmericans made up just 4.2 percent of the denomination’s numbers. This number continued to
decline. By 1976, the Methodist Church reported that only 3.57 percent of its members were
black and its total “ethnic minority membership” equaled 4.25 percent. Like many of Protestant
Christianity’s larger denominations, Methodism fit the majority of white Americans’ racial,
political, and social perspectives of culture and society.8
The National Religious Mood
Evangelical Christianity in the 1950s was on the rise due, in no small part, to the efforts
of Billy Graham. The crux of Graham’s message was salvation. Yet, his alter call was much
more than an appeal for conversion to Christ in his listeners. Graham illustrated his “good news”
of the gospel with the peril and anxiety of the nuclear stalemate with the U.S.S.R. that Americans
8
Howard Spann, Evangelicalism in Modern American Methodism: Theological
Conservatives in the “Great Deep” of the Church, 1900-1980. PhD Dissertation, John Hopkins
University, 1995; 19-20. For a concise overview of early American Methodism’s rise and
growth, see John Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular
Christianity in America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 3-20.
31
UNITED STATES POPULATION9
UNITED METHODIST LAY MEMBERSHIP
METHODIST
% CHANGE
YEAR
NUMBER
% CHANGE
% UMC
57,858
-
1790
3,929,214
-
1.5
65,181
12.7
1800
5,308,483
35.1
1.2
175,088
168.6
1810
7,239,881
36.4
2.4
268,728
53.5
1820
9,638,453
33.1
2.8
501,298
86.5
1830
12,860,702
33.4
3.9
894,753
78.5
1840
17,063,353
32.6
5.2
1,247,077
39.4
1850
23,191,876
35.9
5.4
1,802,927
44.6
1860
31,443,321
35.6
5.7
2,011,942
11.6
1870
38,558,371
22.6
5.2
2,963,723
47.3
1880
50,155,783
30.1
5.9
3,788,426
27.8
1890
62,947,714
25.5
6.0
4,650,026
22.7
1900
75,994,575
20.7
6.1
5,571,751
19.8
1910
91,972,266
21.0
6.0
6,748,837
21.1
1920
105,710,620
14.9
6.4
7,986,419
18.3
1930
122,775,046
16.1
6.5
8,346,004
4.5
1940
131,669,275
7.2
6.3
9,736,752
16.7
1950
150,697,361
14.4
6.5
10,647,864
9.4
1960
179,323,175
18.5
5.9
10,671,774
0.2
1970
203,211,926
13.3
5.3
9,519,407
-10.8
1980
226,545,805
11.4
4.2
Figure 1. Methodist growth in America
9
United Methodist Membership Statistics. “United Methodist Membership as Compared
to the United States Population Census.” General Commission on Archives and History. Duke
University Libraries. (accessed December 28, 2014).
http://guides.library.duke.edu/religionDATA
32
faced. He brought an immediacy and sense of urgency to his revivals that helped propel him—
and evangelical Christianity—back into national prominence. Graham began his pastorate as a
fundamentalist, but by the 1950s, he represented something much different than a typical
fundamentalist preacher. He did not dwell on theology, only on the core message of the Bible:
accept Jesus Christ as your savior—you will realize salvation through belief in Christ. Graham
has been identified as a “neo-evangelical,” or an evangelical Christian who stood somewhere
between the fundamentalism that insisted on narrow, strict views of the Bible and modernists,
who believed that the best way to preserve and expand Christianity was to incorporate it with the
thoughts, practices, and ideals of the modern world. Graham was highly cognizant of the times,
mainly preached a fundamentalist message, and had made peace with the larger, theologically
liberal segments of Protestant Christianity. It was these qualities that enhanced his image and
gave rise to the spread of evangelical Christianity after WWII.
In the 1950s, religious revival was widespread throughout American culture. Typified by
Graham’s large-scale crusades in several major cities, many Americans maintained a positive
perspective of their nation’s status in the world. Yet, this evangelical mood was strikingly
secular. The largest Protestant denominations and the country’s most recognizable leaders
espoused a religion-in-general that neatly fit the mold of the greatest number of Americans. This
religion, or civil religion, took on a new form and reached new heights during the Eisenhower
Administration (1953-1961).
Civil religion in the 1950s was prevalent in many forms across the nation. The form that
it took can be identified by three major attributes. The first of these elements is a strong emphasis
on the individual as a spiritual being. By its nature, Christianity is a religion that holds a personal
33
relationship between the individual and his or her creator at its core. This point was extolled
upon frequently in American denunciations of the communist system. The second element
assumed that America’s system of democracy, specifically, was founded on and maintained a
spiritual foundation. The understanding that America was founded as a nation upon a hill,
created to promote and foster freedom and liberty in the service and at the direction of God,
demonstrated itself in many political, religious, and mainstream methods of publication
throughout the 1950s. This idea had shaped foreign and domestic policies and national agendas
for generations, yet this element of civil religion provided a compelling point of support in the
ideological war against communism. The third feature that civil religion demonstrated during the
Eisenhower Administration was its crusading character. Indeed, the Cold War was a struggle that
many Americans framed as a chosen nation combating the evils of a tyrannical, oppressive,
godless enemy.10
These three features of civil religion can be identified across the nation during President
Truman’s last term, as well as in subsequent decades. Yet, the intensity of these three
components of civil religion was dramatically increased under Eisenhower’s leadership.
Eisenhower himself cultivated this civil religious sentiment among Americans in an attempt to
gain further public support for Cold War policies. In him, one can identify these three
components repeatedly in public addresses, speeches, and press releases.11
Eisenhower fulfilled his role in the nation’s civil religion through methods other than
spoken and written declarations. Before offering his own private prayer at his first presidential
10
Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (Grand
Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1988), 195-198.
11
For example, see William Lee Miller, Piety Along the Potomac: Notes on Politics and
Morals in the Fifties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), 19-34; and Pierard and Linder, Civil
Religion and the Presidency, 198-200.
34
inauguration, Eisenhower took the presidential oath with his left hand resting on two Bibles: one
presented to him by his mother following his graduation from West Point and the other used by
George Washington in 1789. Eisenhower strengthened the relationship between religious leaders
and the White House through the formation of an annual Presidential (now National) Prayer
Breakfast, his own baptism at the National Presbyterian Church, and the appointment of John
Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State.
President Eisenhower connected America’s existence and history to God at many times
throughout his two terms in office. Most of Eisenhower’s talks before the Presidential Prayer
Breakfast, later named the National Prayer Breakfast, demonstrate as much. Eisenhower’s
conception of such a gathering came on the heels of Congress’ decision to formally observe a
national day of prayer annually, which was enacted in 1952. Eisenhower tapped further into the
religious impulse that was highly evident in the country at the time by placing himself at the
head of the national religious table. The Presidential Prayer breakfasts allowed Eisenhower to
affirm his place in the larger context of America’s civil religion, frame a specific, spiritual
history of America’s foundation, and set a recurring event in the nation’s annual calendar that
sustained support for government leadership into the coming decades.12
Eisenhower’s symbolic and controversial decision to present himself for baptism spoke
volumes to Christians across America and expanded his credentials as a national, pastoral
shepherd. On February 1, 1953, just twelve days after his inauguration, Eisenhower was baptized
at the National Presbyterian Church on Washington’s Connecticut Avenue at the urging of Billy
Graham. Though Eisenhower did not wish the event to become public, news of Ike’s baptism
12
Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian
America (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 77-81; Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the
Presidency, 197.
35
almost immediately hit the press and was widely disbursed across the country. This was the first
time in American history that a president had been baptized while in office. 13
Eisenhower’s selection of John Foster Dulles to take the Secretary of State post
represented another facet of Eisenhower’s finger on the pulse of America’s religious mood in the
early Cold War. Not only was Dulles arguably the most well prepared and highly qualified
candidate for the post, but Dulles also connected with many Protestant Americans due to his
piety and his well-known moral worldview. Dulles came from a deeply devout Christian family.
His grandfather lived his life abroad as a Christian missionary and his father was a Presbyterian
minister. John Foster Dulles grew up listening to his father’s sermons each Sunday, studying the
Bible before and after school, and experiencing a Presbyterian atmosphere at Princeton. Dulles
also had family ties to high-profile political seats as well. His uncle, Robert Lansing (18641920), served as the 42nd Secretary of State and John W. Foster (1836-1917), who John Foster
Dulles was named after, served as the 32nd Secretary of State. John Foster Dulles’ background as
a diplomat and international lawyer prepared him for the Secretary of State position. His life’s
work as a Presbyterian layman, ecumenist, and theologically liberal Protestant neatly
complimented Eisenhower’s Administration and further linked high profile figures in America’s
government to America’s churches.14
13
Eisenhower’s wife, Mamie, was already a Presbyterian at the time of his baptism and
the couple’s subsequent membership in the National Presbyterian Church. See Grant Wacker,
America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: The Press of
Harvard University Press, 2014), 207; and Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency,
203.
14
Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, 385-386. Studies on John Foster Dulles’
faith and on his actions as Secretary of State are broad and numerous. Townsend Hoopes offers
both a concise overview of Dulles’ ability to connect his faith to his diplomatic tactics and also
an explanation of Dulles’ impact on what the average American citizen thought of communism
in, Townsend Hoopes, "God and John Foster Dulles." Foreign Policy 13 (Winter, 1973-1974):
36
Through these actions and more, Eisenhower generated favor from the public and
governmental leaders, regardless of their political persuasion. His strategic appeals to Christian
Americans were compelling and attractive to many during the earliest years of post-WWII
Soviet-American tensions. It was under the canopy of civil religion that the Eisenhower
Administration rallied support for America’s Cold War foreign policies.15
The Changing of American Religion in the Early Cold War
To compound the religious upheavals evident in the differences between neo-orthodox,
evangelical, and theologically liberal Christians, fault lines widened throughout Protestant
Christianity in other areas. This difference of opinion on theological matters is apparent in the
ecumenical movement as it existed in the 1950s. Major international church organizations had
maintained a presence in American society for decades, yet theological issues made differences
more apparent between the largest of America’s national and international church organizations
during the early Cold War years. A brief overview of the Federal Council of Churches, National
Council of Churches, World Council of Churches, American Council of Christian Churches, and
International Council of Christian Churches better clarifies the state of American Protestant
churches as they advanced into the second half of the twentieth-century.
The Federal Council of Churches (FCC) was founded in 1908 and included thirty-three
denominations. This coalition of eighteen million Protestant Americans operated within larger
154-177. For a description of Dulles as a reflection of his times and of dominant attitudes among
American leaders, see Gaddis Smith, “The Shadow of John Foster Dulles." Foreign Affairs 52
(January, 1974): 403-408. For summaries of Dulles’ approaches to power and policy as a
Protestant Secretary of State, see Richard Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism,
and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: S&R Books, 1998); and Albert Keim,
"John Foster Dulles and the Protestant World Order Movement on the Eve of World War II."
Journal of Church and State 21 (1979): 73-89.
15
Ibid., 200-205.
37
society mainly through efforts that sought to solve the problems of the industrial era. Founded at
the height of the Progressive Era, this organization sought to combat the toll that Gilded Age and
Progressive Era industrialization exacted on poor and working class American life. The FCC
voiced its position on a range of issues. It largely supported the Allied position throughout WWI,
yet it held to the goal of world peace throughout WWII. Furthermore, the FCC aided in the
establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. In 1950, the FCC merged with thirteen
additional interdenominational agencies to become the National Council of Churches (NCC).
The NCC (later the National Council of Churches in Christ in the U.S.A.) carried on the
work that the FCC began. The NCC grew to a membership of twenty-nine denominations and a
combined membership of thirty-three million church members from 143,000 congregations. Dr.
Samuel McCrea Cavert (1888-1976), a Presbyterian who previously served as the FCC General
Secretary from 1921 to 1950, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (1906-1985) of the Presbyterian Church,
U.S.A, and Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam advanced the interdenominational work of the
NCC. Many religious leaders like these cultivated an organization that promoted multi-church
cooperation for many of the goals that the FCC had aspired to carry out, while at the same time
furthering social action that harkened back to the days of the Social Gospel. Very quickly, the
NCC became the standard symbol of the Protestant cooperation and unity that existed in the
nineteenth and early twentieth-century.16
The NCC operated a massive bureaucracy that consolidated an expansive set of resources
into a single network. This network was highly efficient in channeling the collective voice of a
number of churches into impactful accomplishments. The NCC established a mutually beneficial
16
E.V. Toy, Jr., “The National Lay Committee and the National Council of Churches: A
Case Study of Protestants and Conflict.” American Quarterly 21 (Summer, 1969): 192.
38
relationship with the U.S. government and played a role in the overall support of foreign policy.
The NCC considered the white, theologically liberal, middle class as its core constituency and
represented, in many ways, the majority of Americans. With regard to their relationship to
American foreign policy, the NCC’s Church World Service worked closely with the State
Department for years in worldwide relief and humanitarian endeavors. The NCC’s support of the
Cold War was blatant and intentional until the late 1960s and 1970s when it changed its stance in
the context of the Vietnam War. Throughout the Eisenhower Administration, however, the NCC
represented one of the largest coalitions of Christian churches in the world and largely supported
most U.S. Cold War foreign policy.17
The World Council of Churches (WCC) was an ecumenical organization of different
Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican groups from every continent in the world. Officially formed
at its first assembly in 1948 due to a lengthy delay caused by the fighting of WWII, the WCC
sought to support churches in missionary and evangelical tasks, foster renewal, express concerns
for peace, and bind its member churches to visible unity in faith and worship.
The FCC, NCC, and WCC had similar mission statements. The self-proclaimed goal of
all three groups appeared general enough to include the great majority of Christians. The FCC
and NCC sought to manifest the essential oneness of the Christian churches of America in Jesus
Christ as their divine Lord and Savior, while the WCC claimed itself a “fellowship of churches
which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour” (sic). Despite an agreement among each
organization’s member churches concerning an agreeable, basic and fundamental understanding
17
Jill Gill, “The Politics of Ecumenical Disunity: The Troubled Marriage of Church
World Service and the National Coalition of Churches.” Religion and American Culture: A
Journal of Interpretation 14 (Summer, 2004): 175-176.
39
of scripture and their own group’s foundational belief, these organizations came under fire from
rival, theologically conservative Christians.18
The American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) represented a separatist,
fundamentalist coalition of churches. Founded in 1941, the main impetus of the group’s
organization was to combat the FCC (and later the NCC) with Protestant orthodoxy in the face of
rival groups’ modernism and liberal theology. Carl McIntire (1906-2002) served as the first
president. McIntire, a minister in the Bible Presbyterian Church, was well known as a popular
religious radio broadcaster and founder of the weekly newspaper Christian Beacon. His own
ministry expanded greatly between the 1940s and 1960s with an audience that desired a strong,
fundamentalist gospel. McIntire believed that the ecumenical movement had compromised the
truth of the gospel in its attempt to create a one-world church. In combating the FCC and, later,
NCC, McIntire confronted the growing theologically liberal trend that many large Protestant
churches represented in the growing ecumenical, international church movement. The ACCC
had its greatest clashes with the NCC and WCC throughout the 1950s. Moreover, the
International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) was founded in 1948 to offset the influence
of ecumenism in the face of the founding of the WCC that same year. Unlike the FCC, NCC, and
WCC organizational goals, the fundamentalist, McIntire-led groups sought to protest against “the
tenets of modernism and to proclaim the doctrines of the faith of the Reformation,” thus
redeeming the fundamental message and interpretation of the Bible.19
18
Harold C. Fey, ed., The Ecumenical Advance: A History of the Ecumenical Movement,
vol. 2: 1948-1968 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009); Ruth Rouse and Stephen Neill, eds., A
History of the Ecumenical Movement, vol. 1: 1517-1948 (Geneva: World Council of Churches,
2004).
19
Ibid., 579.
40
McIntire’s opposition to ecumenical activities was not in isolation. Other individuals
voiced their concern with the motives and scope of organizations like the NCC and WCC. Dr.
Fred Schwarz (1913-2009), an Australian physician and founder of the Christian AntiCommunism Crusade, and the Rev. Billy James Hargis (1925-2004), radio minister and founder
of the Christian Crusade ministry, also used fundamentalist theological perspectives along with
militant anti-communism to rouse support for opposition to more theologically liberal churches
and organizations.20
In the main, these multi-church organizations included a large segment of American
Protestants. Though theological differences often acted as a wedge among organizations, all of
the aforementioned groups agreed—at times—on social and political issues that fell outside of
church doctrine or theology. Indeed, the Cold War often blurred the lines that demarcated
outstanding differences among each of these organizations. On the whole, the FCC, NCC, and
WCC represented the largest ecumenical Christian organizations in the world. Their size speaks
to the overall state of American Protestant Christianity—one that was outward looking,
concerned with the world, and involved in social matters. The more fundamentalist
organizations, such as McIntire’s ACCC and ICCC, were focused on retaining the
fundamentalist view of the Bible. These organizations opposed the theologically liberal
perspective on scripture that their rival FCC, NCC, and WCC maintained. The ACCC and ICCC
also demonstrated more aggressive stances on communism and alternate faiths. Many other
denominations, churches, and sects fell outside of these large organizations, yet taken together,
20
Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard University Press, 2014), 304, 313-315; Angela Lahr,
Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political
Evangelicalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 40-41.
41
they present a general picture of the state of Protestant Christianity during the Eisenhower
Administration.
This picture is much more complex than any broad generalization of the time can
adequately describe. It is true that America underwent a general uptick in religious behavior in
the decades leading up to the mid-twentieth century. This increased religious expression was
intensified further after the close of WWII. The new state of affluence and abundance
contributed to millions of working-class and middle-class Americans turning to organized
religion. Simultaneously, the peril of the communist threat brought these same Americans to turn
to Christianity as a means of protection, assurance, and salvation. To say that the United States
underwent a religious phenomenon, or another period of “great awakening,” as some have, does
not tell the entire story. Friction existed within the American religious community. This
dissertation largely follows the neo-orthodox, theologically liberal, and evangelical forms of
Protestant Christianity, however, the 1950s was a time of much change, tension, and awkward
growth within the grand makeup of American churches.21
Conclusion
Several major changes within America’s social and religious history occurred within the
context of the early Cold War years. It is the mid-twentieth century that marks a noticeable end
to great American theological thinkers. Granted, new waves of scholarship and academic
approaches to dealing with psychology, history, and sociology emerged in the second half of the
21
Toy, “The National Lay Committee and the National Council of Churches: A Case
Study of Protestants in Conflict,” 190. For a description of a great awakening in twentieth
century American history, see William McGloughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles
Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004); and Robert Fogel, The
Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism (Chicago: University Press of
Chicago, 2000).
42
twentieth-century. Yet, Reinhold Niebuhr stands as the last great American theologian in a line
that stretches far back to Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Beyond the life of Niebuhr, one can
identify few intellectuals within Protestant American groups. This fact represents one of the most
important contributing factors to the place of American Christianity throughout the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries.
The 1950s also gave rise to a new mode of political expression. Americans began to hitch
their religion to their political ideas at a much different level than before. This is not to say that
the intermingling of personal religious and political ideals did not occur before the post war era
of United States history. Indeed, there is a vast and rich history of political action, rhetoric, and
voting behavior that has been based upon moral motives. But the widespread revival of civil
religion and the easily identifiable, common enemy that the Soviet Union represented in the
minds of many Protestant Americans contributed to a mixing of the religious and the secular in a
manner that set the stage for many partisan planks for the next several decades. This “God and
Country” mindset blossomed in the following decades to become the basis for the shape that the
conservative Republican Party of the 1980s took.
The national emphasis upon freedom and security had its beginnings in the Monroe
Doctrine (1823) and subsequent Theodore Roosevelt Corollary (1904). What is now recognized
as the military industrial complex truly took off during WWII, however, it was in the 1950s that
these ideas of world policing and maintaining American interests overseas were solidified.
Following WWII, the Soviet Union represented America’s sole legitimate superpower rival. It
was within the highly religious American society of the 1950s that many of these longstanding
notions coalesced to form the backbone of future American political and religious ideas.
43
One of the thrusts of this intellectual, social, and religious restructuring was the
“churchmen,” as they were called. Many of America’s ecumenical and multi-church organization
leaders made great strides in contributing a religious component to America’s collective identity.
During the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations (1945-1961), a real presence was
established by leading religious figures for the first time in global politics. Worldwide efforts
brought resolutions, acts of support, or petitions of disagreement to national governments
concerning foreign affairs. In many international matters, large, transnational religious bodies
voiced their perspectives on grand strategy and specific policies to a degree that was
unprecedented in American politics. In short, American preoccupation with the Cold War pulled
many Christians’ intellectual currency away from further understanding and exemplifying the
religious life while simultaneously coating political agendas with heavy moralistic tones.
One way of determining Protestant attitudes toward foreign policy is to examine the
religious leaders who were in place during this time period. By focusing on the major
figureheads of Protestant Christianity’s three largest strands—evangelical, theologically liberal,
and Neo-Orthodox—a clearer picture of religious attitudes concerning foreign policy emerges.
To provide a more complete background of the three acknowledged opinion-makers in Billy
Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Garfield Bromley Oxnam, the following chapter details the
earliest years of each man’s life, respectively. Such an examination reveals both striking
similarities and glaring differences in each religious leader’s childhood and adolescence,
education and life choices, and future path to the top of their particular segment of Protestant
Christianity. It also provides a better understanding of American religious life from the late
nineteenth century through the early twentieth century.
44
CHAPTER 3
THE FORMATIVE UPBRINGING OF GIANTS
To fully comprehend the state of American religion in the early Cold War, one must take
the three major forms of Protestant Christianity into consideration. Neo-Orthodoxy, theological
liberalism, and evangelical Christianity stand out as the leading strands of Protestant Christianity
during this time frame. Obviously, this was not always the case. In following the rise of these
three facets of Protestant Christianity, one must turn to the decades-long path that each form took
in their respective climbs toward widespread and popular acceptance throughout the American
religious landscape. One cannot understand the full picture of American religious history in the
twentieth century without considering the three major figureheads, or opinion makers, of each
Protestant group. This chapter outlines the roots of Billy Graham, Garfield Bromley Oxnam, and
Reinhold Niebuhr’s views of the world by examining their early years. Through a discussion of
each man’s childhood, parents, household, and education, one may better understand the
interchange of competing theological and political ideas within the scope of American religious
history as they developed in the aftermath of WWII.
Billy Graham
Billy Graham’s family descended from a line of Scotch-Irish ancestors who immigrated
to the Carolinas before the American Revolution. Both of Billy Graham’s grandfathers had
fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Billy’s mother and father, Morrow Coffey and
Frank Graham, were wed in 1916 in North Carolina, where both of their families had enjoyed
extensive roots. They had their first child, Billy Frank, two years later. Billy was followed by
45
three siblings, Catherine, Melvin, and Jean. Billy’s parents built one of the largest dairy farms in
the area with seventy-five cows and four hundred regular customers. This afforded the Graham’s
the ability to erect a handsome new colonial-design brick home with indoor plumbing. The
Grahams were able to accomplish this success by working with and benefitting from a growing
contingent of tenant farmers. Graham’s biographer, William Martin, noted that the Grahams took
young Billy to the doctor at one point, complaining that “he never wears down.” They were told,
“It’s just the way he’s built.” Billy was rarely quiet. He could be found running through the
house, overturning egg baskets, knocking plates from the kitchen table, or hurling a passing auto
with rocks at given points of his childhood.1
Billy Graham’s childhood, adolescent years, and young adulthood have been recounted
many times in several books that cover the evangelist’s life. Perhaps one of the most recent
works by Duke historian Grant Wacker sums up the widespread interest with Graham’s life best
in his observation that Graham’s story is so often repeated, “It has acquired the patina of a
Damascus Road experience.”2 Wacker also makes note of an interesting facet of Graham’s
childhood—that the most remarkable thing about Graham’s childhood is just how unremarkable
it was. Young Billy’s parents instilled a rigid level of self-restraint in their children. This level of
discipline was not outrageous for parents of multiple children in the early-twentieth century to
exhibit. Both Graham parents employed corporal punishment at several instances and Billy
Frank found himself on the receiving end hundreds of times during his childhood. In retrospect,
1
William Martin, A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1991), 55-57.
2
Historian Grant Wacker uses this quote to describe Billy Graham’s conversion story,
however, the same quote can be applied to the entirety of Graham’s childhood years; see Grant
Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 6.
46
Billy’s mother once suggested that she and her husband could have gotten by with a lighter
touch. Remembering examples of her husband administering punishment, she reminisced aloud:
“I knew what he was doing was biblically correct,” she conceded, “and children didn’t die,” but
“I think I would use a lot more psychology today.” Indeed, Billy’s parents used psychological
methods as well. In an effort to stifle any of his children’s potential curiosities with the bottle, as
he knew his own father to abuse, Frank once forced Billy and Catherine to drink beer until they
vomited.3
Billy’s mother and father attended the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, a small
Calvinist sect that accepted the literal truth of the Bible. Their church also fully adhered to the
seventeenth-century Westminster Confession of Faith. Billy’s mother Morrow (who also made
the memorization of Bible verses a high priority in the standard routine of any given day in the
Graham household) drummed Bible verses into Billy Frank’s head as she scrubbed his back in
the washtub; fittingly, the first one she taught him was that great golden text of evangelicalism,
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” She also kept a scripture calendar
on the breakfast-room wall, and each morning she tore off a verse the children were expected to
memorize before they left for school or, during the summer, before they went out to play.
The Graham family prayed at every meal and gathered in the family room each evening
for further devotions. In this setting, Billy’s mother would read Scripture and other inspirational
material, and Frank would pray. Billy’s brother Melvin remembered his father’s prayers during
these after-supper, family gatherings, “His hands would tremble and his voice would shake a
little, but people used to love to hear him pray.” The children became more involved as they
3
Martin, 58.
47
grew older, often reading verses or offering simple prayers. By age ten, each child memorized
the Shorter Catechism. This exercise was no easy feat as the Shorter Catechism compresses the
heart of Calvinist theology into 107 concise questions. Life was not entirely uneventful in the
Graham household. The children did adhere to a family ban on games and newspaper comics
each Sunday, however, the Graham children were occasionally surprised from time to time. In
one instance, Frank broke precedent by taking the family out for ice cream after church one
Sunday evening.
Billy remembered his childhood favorably. Considering his rural upbringing on the
family farm, Billy offered, “For a child of the Roaring Twenties who reached adolescence in the
Depression of the early thirties, rural life probably offered the best of all worlds.” He added,
“And being farmers, we could manage to live off the land when the economy nose-dived in the
1929 stock market crash.”4 Billy’s adolescence was not out of the ordinary. His interests were as
common as any other white, rural teenage boy. For the most part, Billy suggested later in life,
this included girls, fast cars, and baseball. Graham recalls his teenage years as the time when he
came to Christ. Graham’s conversion story places him in a tent not far from his home, listening
to an itinerant evangelist named Mordecai Ham. Ham was a traditional Southern evangelist
known in 1934, the year of Billy’s conversion, as an evangelist who was successful in winning
converts for Christ, attacking negligent and soft clergy, and chastising immorality. Ham would
later be associated with far right-wing political causes and anti-Semitism, but revealed no major
sentiments regarding these matters in the fall of 1934. Ham’s tent revival lasted for six weeks.
Though raised in a strong Christian home, Billy cites Ham’s revival as the moment of his
conversion. After visiting several times, Billy made his way down Ham’s tent aisle to confess his
4
Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: Waller
and Company, 1997), 5.
48
sins and accept Christ. He would go on to lead multitudes of people down the aisles of his own
revival venues in the same manner for the next
Following his high-school graduation, Billy sold Fuller Brushes door-to-door in South
Carolina (which he was superbly good at). In the fall of 1936, Billy began his studies in
Cleveland, Tennessee at Bob Jones College. Due to his dislike of Bob Jones College’s strict
social rules, the president’s stringent control, and the area’s damp climate, Billy transferred the
next semester to the Florida Bible Institute (FBI), near Tampa, Florida. Like Bob Jones College,
FBI was an unaccredited institution. Having received his Bachelor of Theology degree in May of
1940, Graham accepted a scholarship from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Though
Graham matriculated into both Bob Jones and FBI unaware of either school’s accreditation
status, he did acquire several skill sets that were invaluable to his character and later professional
life. Graham found the authoritarian control that existed on the campus of Bob Jones College
antithetical to the fundamentalist theology that dominated the school. Moreover, Graham
sharpened his preaching skills and tried his hand at radio ministry while a student at FBI. It was
Wheaton, however, that provided Graham with the most worthwhile education of all the schools
he studied at.
At Wheaton, Graham’s style of sermon delivery transformed into that of the preacher that
would lead the nation into an evangelistic resurgence in the 1950s. He also encountered an
expansive network of friendships and acquaintances that he cultivated over the course of his life.
Perhaps most importantly, Graham met his future wife, Ruth Bell (1920-2007), while at
Wheaton. He eventually graduated from in 1943. Graham’s marriage to Ruth, his relationship
49
with her father, general surgeon L. Nelson Bell (1894-1973), and his career beyond graduation
are the subject of Chapter Four.5
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr was born on June 21, 1892 in Wright City, Missouri. His father, Rev.
Gustav Niebuhr (1863-1913) emigrated from Germany to America in 1881 at the age of
eighteen. Reinhold’s father was a minister for the German Evangelical Synod, (which went on to
be absorbed by the United Church of Christ), a denomination created by the 1817 union of the
Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia. Gustav’s faith combined a pietistic, evangelical
Christianity with an openness to the theological liberalism of the late nineteenth century.
Reinhold’s father, Gustav was characteristic of his generation in his acceptance of the
patriarchal views that dominated American life. He also displayed the tendencies of a
stereotypical authoritarian German father. He did not believe in dancing, shirking household
chores, or reading newspapers on Sunday. He expected his family to follow these rules.6 He
discouraged his daughter, Hulda, from pursuing higher education. He may be remembered most
though, aside from his lifelong career as a pastor, for having a profound, positive impact on his
family. Three of his four children went into the ministry. His life and religious views
undoubtedly influenced the course of his children’s lives. He took his final position as pastor at
St. John’s Evangelical Church (now the United Church of Christ) in Lincoln, Illinois in 1902 and
remained there until he died unexpectedly of diabetes at the age of 50 in 1913.7
5
Martin, 59.
Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row,
1987), 11.
7
Charles Calvin Brown, Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prophetic Role and
Legacy (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 16; Jon Diefenthaler, H. Richard
6
50
Reinhold’s mother, Lydia (Hosto) Niebuhr (1869-1961) served her husband in the role of
an unpaid co-pastor and managed the domestic sphere of the home. This was typical for many
pastors’ wives during the time period. Very little is known of her private life. Lydia’s sister,
Adele Hosto, went on to become a consecrated Deaconess in the German Evangelical Synod and
her father, Edward Hosto, was a missionary with the German Evangelical Synod. It is safe to say
that Reinhold came from a family that was very committed to living out spiritual lives.
Reinhold had three siblings. The oldest, and only sister, was Hulda Niebuhr (1889-1959).
Like all of her siblings, Hulda was exceedingly bright. She respected her father’s wishes and did
not pursue a college education following her high school graduation in 1906. She did unpaid
church work in her home and at her father’s church in Lincoln, Illinois and, later, in Reinhold’s
Detroit parish. After her father’s death in 1913, however, Hulda decided to apply to college. She
eventually earned an A.B. and M.A. at Boston University, becoming one of the first three female
assistant professors at Boston University in 1927. She moved to New York City the following
year to work on her Ph.D. at Columbia Teacher’s College and, despite not finishing her
doctorate, became one of the earliest Ministers of Education (officially Director of Religious
Education) in America in 1930. She served in that role between 1930-1945 at the Madison
Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York.
The second child and firstborn boy, Walter Niebuhr (1890-1946) was the more rebellious
of Gustav and Lydia’s children. Descriptions of Walter typically portray him as tall and
handsome with good athletic abilities. His immediate ambition was to be a college fraternity man
followed by a successful career in business. His father did not attempt to block his eldest son’s
Niebuhr: A Lifetime of Reflections on the Church and the World (Macon, GA: Mercer University
Press, 1986), 4.
51
choices in life, yet he did not grant his approval either. Walter was the only Niebuhr child not to
become involved in church work. He remained a faithful Christian and became a businessman
and journalist. After his father’s death, he proved to be the financial savior of the family. His
success in life was volatile. He often relied on his brothers’ financial stability to supplement his
lack of income at various trying times in his life. Lydia gave birth to a second son and third
child, Herbert, who died in infancy. This was still a fairly common and extremely unfortunate
occurrence that many families experienced at the time.
Reinhold and Helmut Richard Niebuhr were the two youngest siblings. H. Richard (18941962), the youngest brother, is often considered to be the most brilliant of the Niebuhrs. One of
the interesting ironies of scholarship that focuses on Reinhold or H. Richard is the tendency to
name H. Richard the better-educated and more intelligent theologian while simultaneously
referring to Reinhold as America’s theologian.8 H. Richard did not have as close a relationship
with his father as his brother Reinhold did. Shy and quiet as a youth, H. Richard followed his
brother’s footsteps graduating from Elmhurst College in 1912 and Eden Seminary in 1915. He
earned his M.A. in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis in 1918 and became the
only member of his family to finish a doctorate, receiving his B.D. and Ph.D. from Yale in 1923
and 1924, respectively. H. Richard was ordained by the Evangelical Synod in 1916 and was the
pastor of an Evangelical Synod congregation in St. Louis between 1916 and 1918. He also
served as pastor of a Congregationalist church while pursuing his Ph.D. in New Haven,
Connecticut. H. Richard went on to serve as President of his denomination’s Eden Theological
Seminary from 1919 to 1931 and then as professor at Yale Divinity School from 1931 until his
8
Any appropriate examination of this irony falls beyond the scope of this section. Yet,
this question requires further exploration, as it has not been sufficiently addressed in any of the
scholarship that covers either Reinhold or H. Richard Niebuhr.
52
death in 1962. He wrote much less than Reinhold, yet he remains extremely influential to
theologians today. His most popular work, Christ and Culture, remains a standard textbook in
many seminaries and divinity schools throughout North America.9
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), known as Reinie to his friends, was clearly one
of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Indeed, he stands as one of the last
great Christian intellectuals. Born in Wright City, Missouri, Reinhold had a close and intensely
strong relationship with his father. Commenting on the influence of Gustav upon his middle-son,
Reinhold’s biographer, Richard Fox noted, “he…found his father the most interesting man in a
prairie town of ten thousand residents. [To Reinhold} his father’s vocation was more interesting
than that of anyone else in Lincoln.”10 Reinhold graduated from Elmhurst College in 1910 before
moving on to Eden Seminary, which functioned more as a pastoral and missionary finishing
school than an accredited post-baccalaureate seminary. Two events made 1913 a bittersweet year
for Niebuhr: his graduation from Eden and his father’s death. He took up his father’s pastorate
before moving to Yale.
In 1915 he was ordained by his father’s church, St. John’s Evangelical Church in
Lincoln, Illinois and subsequently called as the pastor of a small mission, Bethel Evangelical
Church in Detroit, Michigan. Bethel had sixty-five members when Niebuhr arrived and over
seven hundred when he left in 1928. Largely thanks to his mother, Lydia, living with him,
assuming both domestic duties as well as serving in much of the routine work of the church,
Reinhold was able to become very active outside of his pastoral duties; even involving himself in
the politics of the city. During this time, he wrote his Moral Man and Immoral Society, which
9
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951).
Fox, 11.
10
53
began his break from the social gospel and marked the beginning of his own school of “Christian
Realism.”11
In a very brief overview of the Niebuhr household, several main points stand out. The
head of household, Gustav, was a first-generation immigrant American. He chose to plant his
roots in the Midwest and live out the life of a pastor. This household was strongly patriarchal.
Reinhold and his siblings all demonstrated rigid obedience to their father’s wishes—save Walter
on a few occasions. The women of the home, Lydia and Hulda, operated within the stringent
sphere of women at the turn of the twentieth century. Lydia operated within the domestic sphere
of the home, raising her children and supporting her husband, and Hulda observed her father’s
wishes—at least until his death. By considering the lives of Hulda and Lydia, one can identify a
shift in the perspectives of two generations. Though Hulda went without demonstrating anything
in the way of an extreme, feminism-activist streak, she did mark a break with the past practice of
most women by choosing her own independent path following the death of her father. Hulda’s
career, in its own right, signaled a changing of the times and the erosion of separate spheres and
Coventry with her choice for education and her later career in New York City.
There are several similarities that exist among the three men that serve as the main
figures of analysis for this dissertation. Yet, there are also profound differences. By looking at
the earliest years of Reinhold Niebuhr’s life, one may identify many of these differences. The
actions of Reinhold’s family speak to larger changes that occurred in this time period. Women’s
rights began to make gains, the large influx of immigrants that moved into the United States was
not as new as it was in the late nineteenth century, yet the Niebuhr’s contribute to the story of
11
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932).
54
how and where many of these immigrants settled and made a life. As will be discussed later, the
Niebuhr’s were German, and this characteristic posed an entirely different set of complexities in
the 1930s. In examining Reinhold Niebuhr’s early years, one can better understand the man
during his formative years and beyond. One can also gain a fuller understanding of America
itself.
Garfield Bromley Oxnam
Garfield Bromley Oxnam was born on August 14, 1891 in Sonora, California. His father,
Thomas Oxnam, was a miner who moved often from one mine to another, constructing a
church—frequently with his own hands—and serving as its pastor at each stop along the way.
Thomas, who was born in the village of Pool in the district of Carn Brea, Cornwall in 1854, had
been mining since he followed his own father into the mines at the age of seven. After the death
of his father and bleak prospects, Thomas moved from mines in Cornwall, to South Africa, to
Montreal, to the American West. Thomas met his bride, Mamie, in Illinois during one of these
moves. Bromley’s mother, Mamie was a devout Methodist, active in local church, a charter
member of Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and daughter of a miner. Thomas and Mamie
moved further West together after becoming husband and wife.
Garfield Bromley Oxnam was the second of four children, and by the time he was four,
his Methodist, mining father had moved the family to Los Angeles—a city that Oxnam would be
associated with until 1928. The oldest sibling, Tom, was eight years older than Brom (as he was
referred to by those closest to him) and maintained a distant relationship. Bromley looked upon
his sister, Lois, who was three years younger, with the affection of a protective older brother.
The youngest Oxnam child, Willie, enjoyed attending ballgames and the circus with Bromley.
55
He also enjoyed the schoolyard protection that his older brother provided. In short, the Oxnam
children were a hodgepodge of characters. Tom went on to be an engineer who was politically
conservative in his politics. Lois, a caring girl and dutiful daughter who remained unwed, carried
on through life taking care of her widowed mother, and Willie, the musically talented social
butterfly, dreamt of an acting career that never took off.
Thomas Oxnam’s aspirations for his children were surely realized in Bromley’s life. G.
Bromley Oxnam was named Garfield after the Republican president and Bromley after Dr.
Robert I. Bromley—the surgeon who saved his mother’s life three years before Bromley’s birth.
Foreshadowing his politics later in life, Oxnam went by Bromley rather than Garfield from his
childhood. 12
The son of a miner, Bromley ascended through life from humble beginnings to enjoy a
comfortable level of success. After spending his childhood and adolescent years in Los Angeles,
he attended the University of Southern California from 1909 until 1912. It was there that Oxnam
met, courted, and proposed to Ruth Fisher. Oxnam’s family and Ruth’s family were prominent
members of the First Methodist Church in Los Angeles and shared much in common. Most of
all, Ruth and Oxnam were deeply devoted to their Methodist beliefs. When Oxnam decided to sit
for examination by the Quarterly Conference, First Methodist Church and subsequently granted a
local preacher’s license in August of 1912, Ruth was ecstatic. She was especially pleased as she
had more than encouraged him in his decision-making on the matter. Oxnam was heavily
involved with the task of pastoral responsibilities between the end of 1912 and the beginning of
12
Robert Moats Miller, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism
(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990), 25-30.
56
1913 before he travelled by train to Boston, Massachusetts to begin formal training for the
ministry at the Boston University School of Theology.
That Oxnam was the prototypical liberal Methodist of this era can be identified as early
as his choice to attend the BU School of Theology. Oxnam’s sole biographer, historian Robert
Moats Miller observed, “Bromley chose to study at the BU School of Theology because he
considered it Methodism’s premier seminary.” Miller contends that Oxnam found several aspects
particularly appealing: “He admired the school’s contributions to the Church, its emphasis on the
social aspects of Christianity, and the tradition of liberalism associated with [professor] Borden
Parker Bowne’s philosophical idealism.”13 The Methodist Church had found the liberal trend in
theology appealing long before Oxnam had decided to enter into college. Yet a combination of
both a Methodist upbringing coupled with an embrace of theologically liberal interpretations of
the Bible had convinced Oxnam of his need to pursue a life within the Methodist Church.
Oxnam had a passionate affection for Jesus Christ (he gave his life to Christ before
enrolling at USC) yet he despised dogma. He confessed to his diary, “I have not said the
Apostles’ Creed for four years, because I did not believe in it…I am going to take that Creed,
sentence by sentence and try to write what I believe under each sentence. I hate ritual,
formalism.”14 Oxnam could be found reading work by Adam Smith and Karl Marx outside of his
mandatory readings.15 When important figures visited Boston to speak, Oxnam attended—and
13
Ibid., 55.
14
Quoted in Miller, 57.
15
Interestingly, Oxnam used these authors to uphold the Christian faith in a sermon
approximately forty years later: “The Christian Gospel is not to be found in Adam Smith’s
‘Wealth of Nations’ nor in Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital.’ It is to be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of the New Testament, and in the vision of
57
took notes. Oxnam decided that Walter Rauschenbusch’s Harvard sermon which he attended in
1914 was the grandest that he had ever heard. Oxnam married Ruth in 1914, graduated in 1915,
and was ordained in January of 1916. Oxnam chose to be ordained in Massachusetts because he
planned to pursue postgraduate study there, yet he neglected to follow through on his application
to Harvard’s Ph.D. program in history. Having been received on trial by the Southern California
Annual Conference in absentia before leaving for Boston, he returned to Los Angeles to begin
his ministerial appointment.
Conclusion
By juxtaposing these three men, several similarities come to the fore. Each one of these
Christian leaders came from humble beginnings. From the descriptions above, one can identify a
travelling miner, a first-generation German pastor’s family, and a North Carolina farmer’s
homestead as the background for each of Oxnam, Niebuhr, and Graham’s beginnings. Each man
came from modest families. Each attended college. Each man also rose quickly in their spiritual
and professional lives to preside over the explosive growth that their respective form of
Protestant Christianity underwent in the latter half of their lives.
In each man’s youth, one can identify a major impact that each one of their fathers left
upon them. Oxnam, Graham, and Niebuhr all respected their fathers and held the toil of each of
their lives in high regard. All men incorporated the values and work ethic of their respective
fathers into their own lives. Additionally, all three men moved from adolescence to adulthood
between the 1910s and the 1930s. This timeframe was ripe with major theological and political
John in The Revelation.” G. Bromley Oxnam, “We Intend to Stay Together!” A Sermon
Delivered to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches at the First Methodist
Church, Evanston, Illinois. Chicago: Methodist Church Commission on Promotion and
Cultivation Central Promotional Office, 1954.
58
questions of ethics and morality. WWI, the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, the Great
Depression, the New Deal, and the beginning of WWII all occurred at a period of time in each
man’s young life when each would have still been deciding their own views of the world for
themselves. Indeed, it was either one, or a combination of these very incidents that were the
deciding factor for Niebuhr’s rejection of theological liberalism and turn to Neo-Orthodoxy;
Oxnam’s embrace of the Social Gospel and theological liberalism—strongly hitched to
ecumenical, global, interchurch organizations; and Graham’s call to evangelize as many men and
women as he could possibly reach.
Oxnam, born in 1891, and Niebuhr, born in 1892 were both older than Graham, born in
1918. Both Niebuhr and Oxnam were also born into a first-generation American household. This
may also explain Oxnam and Niebuhr’s differences in political perspectives in comparison to
Graham. Although Oxnam and Niebuhr wield additional sociological and demographic
differences compared to Graham, both were also old enough to live through and remember the
height of America’s Progressive Era. Both would have been old enough to remember the effects
that industrialization and immigration exacted upon the country years earlier.
Obviously, each man demonstrated differences as well. Geographically, each man was
raised in very different regions of the country. Niebuhr spent his youth, for the most part, in the
Midwest. Graham grew up in North Carolina. Oxnam, though never in one place for too long
during his childhood, largely grew up in California. Each man experienced a different religious
upbringing than the other. Despite these similarities and differences, each man made his own
name in the Protestant Christian community. All three gained enough notoriety and name
recognition to enjoy something in the way of power and respect. All three also enjoyed the
limelight and the association with power. In several instances, one can identify all three men
59
reaching out for and responding to the acknowledgement of government bodies, media attention,
and U.S. Presidents.
Each man also spent most of their lives advocating for very different forms of Protestant
Christianity. Reinhold Niebuhr sought to apply his understanding of ethics, morality, and
Christianity practically to the political tensions of the day. G. Bromley Oxnam sought to
undermine aggression, injustice, and friction on a global scale through large, international
efforts. Billy Graham had hoped to change the world from the inside out by bringing as many
people across the globe as he could to recognize their sin in the presence of a real God. These
very different understandings of the Bible, the world, and humanity, all coalesced at a very
peculiar time in America’s religious history.
60
CHAPTER 4
BILLY GRAHAM’S EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN THE
1950S
The life and career of Billy Graham has left a tremendous footprint upon American
history. The work that Graham performed over sixty years touched the lives of millions. Through
the printed word, in-person rallies and revivals, and television sets, Graham’s appealing
personality, relevant and meaningful sermons, and ability to demonstrate the applicability of his
message to the lives of his audiences propelled him and his ministry to dizzying heights. In the
1950s, Graham solidified his hold on his place within the great pantheon of America’s religious
history through record-breaking attendance at rallies, his radio and television ventures, and his
decision to operate from the place of a moderate, evangelical Christian, rather than the waning
fundamentalist camp or the then-dominant theologically liberal wing of the spectrum. While
Graham’s impact on American foreign policy that dealt with the Soviet Union was not nearly as
influential as that of other leading Protestant Christians, his interaction with anti-communist
sentiment aided in the federal government’s cultivation of public support for hawkish policy and
Christians’ willingness to more closely align their religious beliefs with political behavior.
Having grown up on a dairy farm in North Carolina, Graham shifted his stance from the
fundamentalist understanding of the Bible that he affirmed early in life to something that can
only be described as “evangelical.” Graham made obvious and intentional overtures in making
himself and his message as acceptable and open as possible. Graham moved away from the
fundamentalist stance that he previously subscribed to and embraced a perspective, sometimes
61
referred to as “new evangelicalism.” This theological, religious, and personal stance was evident
throughout the 1950s, but crystallized during the 1957 New York crusade held in Madison
Square Garden from May to September. During that timespan, Graham cooperated with
theologically liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics in advertising and carrying out the sixteen
week-long revival that saw an astonishing 2.4 million cumulative attendees turn out to hear
Graham’s message.
His turn away from fundamentalism was, in reality, not all that drastic. He still
maintained an acceptance of most of the doctrinal pillars that fundamentalists held as true, yet
Graham avoided entangling himself in debates centered upon dogmatism and Armageddon.
Graham did so by placing an emphasis, in the 1950s, on evangelism and cooperation with all
Christians. In one example, Graham responded curtly to a direct line of questioning that
attempted to pin him down at a particular point along a theological spectrum: “I am neither a
fundamentalist nor a modernist.”1 His own shift both reflected and impacted the religious
sentiments of many Americans. Indeed, coupled with the rise of Neo-Orthodoxy, it was
Graham’s popularization of this version of evangelical Christianity that upset the theologically
liberal churches’ dominance over American Protestantism.2
It was this quality of Graham’s that aided in his rise to stardom in America. Indeed,
Graham had his finger on the pulse of many Americans’ greatest fears and aspirations—
1
John R. Rice, “Questions Answered About Billy Graham,” Sword of the Lord June 17,
1955, p. 10. Further frustrating self-identifying fundamentalists, Graham answered another
reporter; “The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God
has his people in all churches.” See, Martin, A Prophet With Honor, 220 and 657n220.
2
The most recent assessment of Graham attributes the overall meaning of Graham’s
career to a combination of Graham’s personal, creative agency and the changing forces that
shaped modern America, see Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of
a Nation (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 1-18.
62
especially in the first decades of his ministry. His ability to frame nearly every sermon that he
delivered in the 1950s within the context of dire global affairs confirmed the personal worries of
many individuals, thus presenting the closing, “altar call” portion of his message with greater
urgency and importance. Graham used this same model of delivery in many varieties of ministry.
Academics and the mainstream press have examined Graham’s career, meaning, and legacy
since he marched into the national spotlight after his 1949 Los Angeles revival. One of the
overarching themes of Graham’s legacy continues to be that of Graham’s having been “geared to
the times.”3
The Ministry of Billy Graham
Graham’s life story has been recounted many times. With few exceptions for perspective
or author’s emphasis, the details and conclusions vary little. Graham’s handling of his finances,
his marriage, and his image—all categories that have demolished careers of weaker-willed
church leaders for generations—has become the benchmark for pastors, preachers, and religious
personalities across the nation. Yet, this chapter on Graham merits, at the least, a brief sketch of
the high points of his career.4
3
Youth For Christ leaders described their own evangelistic efforts as “Geared to the
Times, but Anchored to the Rock.” Billy Graham served as the organization’s first full-time
evangelist. Graham was with YFC when he benefitted immensely from publisher William
Randolph Hearst’s desire to cover Graham’s YFC rallies frequently. For further reading on
Hearst’s directive to “Puff Graham,” see, William Martin, A Prophet With Honor, 93 and
631n93; John Dart, “Billy Graham Recalls Help From Hearst.” Los Angeles Times June 7, 1997.
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-06-07/local/me-1034_1_billy-graham-recalls (accessed
September 20, 2015).
4
The prevailing biographical or autobiographical works that cover Graham are Martin, A
Prophet With Honor, Graham, Just As I Am, McLoughlin, Billy Graham, Revivalist in a Secular
Age, (New York: Ronald Press, 1960), David Aikman, Billy Graham: His Life and Influence
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), John Pollock, The Billy Graham Story (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2003), and Roger Bruns, Billy Graham: A Biography (Westport, CT: Greenwood
63
After the success of the previously mentioned 1949 Los Angeles meeting, Graham’s
crusades grew in size and in frequency. Following a crusade in Boston, Graham spent the
remainder of 1950 refining and sharpening his revival campaign presentation in Columbia, South
Carolina; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Atlanta, Georgia; and several New
England states. Aside from crusades, Graham also launched his Hour of Decision radio program
on the ABC network. This venture led to a half-hour television program, also titled Hour of
Decision, which lasted from 1951 to 1954. Though brief in its lifespan, it gave way to network
television broadcasts that were made from his actual crusade rallies. Besides radio and television,
Graham further capitalized on popular media forms of the day through film. Graham’s film
ministry began in 1951 with Mr. Texas and went on to claim over 100 million viewers. In radio,
television, and movie formats, Graham demonstrated his ability to connect with and speak for
multitudes of Protestant Christian Americans. The rapid-fire exposure in the most relevant media
forms of the day played no small part in Graham’s quickly becoming a national household name.
Radio, television, film, and large-scale crusades did not represent the only outlets for
Graham’s ministry in the 1950s. In 1952, Graham utilized the printed word as an extension of his
multi-faceted ministry. He began with a daily newspaper question and answer column titled
Press, 2004). Other works centered on Graham exist, such as Wacker, America’s Pastor, Andrew
Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy
Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2009), Angela Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of
Political Evangelicalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Ken Garfield, Billy Graham:
A Life in Pictures (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2013), and Steven Miller, Billy Graham and the
Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), among
others, yet these either fail to go into the depth that the former list covers, or these works are
focused on particular aspects of Graham’s life or career. Many articles, newspaper editorials,
M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations that are not listed also consider Graham. It is from these
secondary works, primary sources from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Billy
Graham Center Archives (hereafter BGCA) in Wheaton, Illinois, and online holdings of BGCA
at http://www2.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives that most of the biographical information in this
chapter is drawn.
64
“My Answer.” This column, which was sponsored by the New York News-Chicago Tribune
syndicate, provided Graham the opportunity to address the hundreds of thousands of letters that
he received each year. “My Answer” appeared five days each week in many newspapers across
the nation. Due do its popularity, several hundreds of Graham’s answers served as the basis of
his eighth book, which Doubleday published in 1960, simply titled, My Answer. By the end of
the 1950s, Graham’s “My Answer” column reached an estimated 16 million readers.5
Graham’s most impactful print apparatus, however, was Christianity Today. One of the
major guiding hands in this endeavor was his father-in-law, Lemuel Nelson Bell (1894-1973).
Graham got along well with his wife’s father and mother, L. Nelson and Virginia McCue Bell
(1892-1974), who had spent a life’s work as Presbyterian missionaries to China. L. Nelson and
Virginia served as Presbyterian medical missionaries in China from 1916 to 1941 within Jiangsu
Province, three hundred miles north of Shanghai. As a chief surgeon and administrator of the
Love and Mercy Hospital, L. Nelson kept a busy schedule with medical, administrative, and
pastoral duties. Upon returning to the United States, L. Nelson continued to practice medicine in
Ashville, North Carolina. In 1942, Bell founded the Southern Presbyterian Journal. In 1956, he
became the executive editor of the newly launched Christianity Today, after discussing the idea
and scope of the periodical with his son-in-law, Graham. Very few people had as large an
influence upon Billy Graham as Bell.6
5
Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants, 143; Graham, Just As I Am, 1115.
Graham envisioned Christianity Today as a platform for evangelicals—which he also
referred to as “conservatives”—to both challenge the theologically liberal perspective of The
Christian Century and also to restore “intellectual respectability” and “spiritual impact” to
evangelical Christianity. He especially aimed to reach a broader audience of ministers than he
was at the time. See Graham, Just As I Am, 425-430; Papers of Lemuel Nelson Bell, Collection
318, “Biography,” Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, IL,
6
65
During a crusade in Louisville, Kentucky, Graham received a letter from his father-in-law
concerning the first-ever run of the magazine: “My dear Bill, 285,000 copies of the first issue of
Christianity Today finished rolling off the presses in Dayton at 2:00 A.M. today.”7 It quickly
became the premiere Christian periodical in the world. It also dealt significant blows to the
circulation numbers of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christianity and Crisis and theologically liberal
Protestants’ main source of theological and church-related information, Christian Century.
Indeed, the latter result was one of Graham’s chief aims when he conceptualized Christianity
Today. Graham took this success further in 1960 with a more popular-minded monthly
publication, Decision magazine. Complete with large, glossy photographs, devotionals, and
positive stories, Graham hoped to further his reach and ministry. He accomplished as much with
the wide dissemination of both Christianity Today and Decision magazine.8
The main aspect of Graham’s ministry in the 1950s remained his crusades. In 1954,
Graham led his colossal crusade in London. In 1957, he held his aforementioned New York City
crusade. All in all, Graham carried out eighty-five crusades throughout the Caribbean, Europe,
Australia, Canada, the “Far East,” and the United States. Beginning in 1960 and carrying through
each year for four decades, Graham would further spread the reach of his crusades to include
more of East Asia, Africa, Mexico, and the Middle East. His core constituency remained,
however, in America. Despite Graham’s repetitive references to the gloomy state of world
http://www2.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/GUIDES/318.htm#3. (accessed online, October 10,
2015).
7
Letter from L. Nelson Bell to Billy Graham, October 10, 1956; quoted in Graham, Just
As I Am, 430.
8
In addition to the founding of Christianity Today and Decision magazine, Graham also
released six books in the first decade of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s (BGEA)
existence. He would go on to write thirty-two books over the course of his ministry. BGEA
proudly boasts that Decision magazine currently maintains an annual circulation of 400,000.
http://billygraham.org/news/media-resources/electronic-press-kit/bgea-history/ (accessed
November 1, 2015).
66
affairs, the inherent sin of each crusade-goer, and the prevalence of sin in society, people flocked
to each of Graham’s crusades in droves. Between 1949 and 1954, for example, a staggering 10
million Americans attended a Billy Graham crusade.9 It was Graham’s ability to harness
widespread concerns with the worldly and the divine, coupled with the persuasiveness of his
message that thrust him to celebrity status in the 1950s.
Evangelical Christianity and Billy Graham
Billy Graham came to personify evangelical Christianity in the 1950s. He channeled his
successes through a number of outlets that dominated America’s large, Protestant population.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) was established in 1950 as the official
nonprofit, religious corporation that would manage the finances for Graham’s successful
projects. The majority of these BGEA-led efforts were introduced in the 1950s through a variety
of formats. Notably, Graham branched out to every popular form of media that he could in the
decade or so after his “Christ for Greater Los Angeles” Crusade in September of 1949.
Graham’s meteoric rise in popularity could not have been possible without the herculean
efforts of many. His ministry’s core team worked alongside one another for decades. Graham’s
team was finalized in the late 1940s. The two most prominent and trusted members were
Graham’s musical soloist, George Beverly Shea (1909-2013) and front man Cliff Barrows
(1923-). Other men factored in to Graham’s team, such as his brother-in-law Leighton Ford
(1930-) and Graham’s lifelong friend Grady Wilson (1919-1987), who served in capacities as
preachers, yet Barrows and Shea remained Graham’s closest and most trusted confidants.
Barrows, a fellow Youth For Christ member, fit in well with Graham’s endeavors by working as
Graham’s crusade announcer and organizing and leading enormous choirs. Shea was Graham’s
9
Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants, 129.
67
musical soloist. Reminiscent of teams of evangelists and musicians of the past, Graham and Shea
represented an accessible, popular, and successful duo.
Indeed, Billy Sunday (1862-1935) had Homer Rodeheaver (1880-1955), Dwight Moody
(1837-1899) had Ira Sankey (1840-1908), and Graham had Shea. The latter two complimented
each other’s individual talents by attracting would-be revival goers who may not have been
strong or secure enough in their own faith to attend with Shea’s songs and hymns. Then Graham
would follow. As Graham put it: “We used every modern means to catch the ear of the
unconverted and then we punched them straight between the eyes with the gospel.”10 Shea’s
contributions to Graham’s work became iconic; especially in his renditions of “How Great Thou
Art” and “Just as I Am.” Graham’s modeling his ministry on effective strategies of past
preachers was not limited to bringing Shea on board. He looked far back through American
history for other methods as well.
Closely related to successful preacher and musician combinations of the past, Graham
shared additional similarities with popular and important religious leaders in American history.
Graham was no stranger to using the printed word to promote the Gospel. Much like the
eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield who preached against a selfish preoccupation
with the pursuit of wealth, Graham utilized the commercial tools of his time to promote his
ministry. Similar to Whitefield, Graham put several advance publicity methods into action during
his many revivals. Graham sold his books and other materials at rallies and revivals, advertised
his impending crusades in local newspapers, and engaged in self-promotion when addressing
10
Billy Graham, Revival in Our Time (Wheaton, IL: Special Edition for Youth for Christ
International, 1950), 3, quoted in Grant Wacker, “Billy Graham’s America,” Church History 78
(September, 2009): 502; and William McLoughlin, Jr., Billy Graham: Revivalist in a Secular
Age, 38.
68
correspondence to friends and acquaintances in positions of power. All of these were methods
that garnered major currency for evangelists throughout American history. Throughout the
1950s, Graham introduced these successful concepts of the past incrementally into his own
ministry.11
Graham made seemingly subtle changes to his work—mostly throughout the 1950s. His
forays into different communication forms and channels certainly factor into this evolution, yet
the much more personal, in person crusade experience benefitted most from Graham’s utilization
of past methods. At the 1950 Columbia, South Carolina campaign, the sponsoring Layman’s
Evangelistic Club hired Willis Haymaker (1895-1980) for the purposes of advance work and
encouraging cooperation across denominational lines in the area. Haymaker, the son of
Presbyterian missionaries, had gained some form of notoriety through his work in campaign and
rally organization with Bob Jones, Sr., John R. Rice, and others in the prior two decades. It was
at Graham’s 1950 rally in South Carolina that Haymaker put in place Billy Sunday’s delegation
system: churches that agreed to cooperate in the coming Graham revival would agree to reserve
sizable blocks of tickets on certain nights. This ensured optimal attendance at each service
offered by Graham. Haymaker’s borrowed technique went over so well that Graham convinced
him to join his ministry as the official head crusade organizer; a position that Haymaker held
until he retired in 1979.12
11
Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants, 142; Lambert, “Peddler in Divinity:
George Whitefield and the Great Awakening,” in Stanley N. Katz, et. al., Colonial America:
Essays in Politics and Social Development (New York: Routledge, 2011), 511-529.
12
“Biography of Willis Graham Haymaker,” BGEA: Papers of Willis Graham
Haymaker, Collection 1, BGCA. www2.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/GUIDES/001.html (accessed
October 25, 2015). See also, Martin, 129.
69
In addition to advertising his impending crusades ahead of time, assessing local churches’
interest in cooperating with the Graham team, and providing meeting days, times, and advance
tickets to cities where crusades were to be held, Graham also mimicked evangelists of the past in
his decision to build meeting place structures or tabernacles specifically for his crusades. In
Portland, Oregon, in 1950, for example, Graham was able to have a football field sized
tabernacle that seated 12,000 constructed for his services. Much like the methods of Billy
Sunday four decades earlier, Graham erected large structures to house the great multitudes of
revival-seekers in advance of his arrival.13
Graham came to personify evangelical Christianity in many ways. His position in the
upper echelons of the American religious community came about as a result of his efforts toward
diversifying the scope and reach of his ministry through the BGEA in the 1950s. This rise in
popularity and importance were also aided by the successes of his team, the guidance of his
father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, and also Graham’s ability to harness the successful strategies of
the most successful evangelists of the past. In accomplishing these goals, Graham demonstrated
his heightened perception of the national mood.
His audience—mostly theologically and politically conservative white Protestants—
embraced Graham as a mouthpiece for their greatest fears and aspirations. By praying on the
White House lawn in 1950, to the chagrin of President Truman, Graham sent a message to the
American public that faith was welcomed in Washington at a level that was, until then, not as
casually displayed. Graham’s major successes across the world throughout the 1950s etched his
13
For comparisons of the likeness between Graham and Sunday in evangelical revival
logistics, see, ibid., 133; Roger Bruns, Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 99; and Kathryn Lofton, “The Preacher Paradigm:
Promotional Biographies and the Modern-Made Evangelist.” Religion and American Culture: A
Journal of Interpretation 16 (Winter, 2006): 95-123.
70
name in the collective American mind as the standalone figurehead of evangelical Protestant
Christianity.
Billy Graham and Communism
A basic assessment of Graham in the 1950s leads one to find him a cold warrior in almost
any definition of the term. He was certainly anti-communist. Yet, it remains difficult to assign a
generalized title to Graham concerning the intensity of his sentiments regarding communism
versus capitalism; or the Russian-American tensions of the Cold War. Graham was vehemently
opposed to the idea of communism. He found the form of communism that existed throughout
the Soviet Union threatening at best. More often than not, he judged it as evil. He also used the
potential of communism’s spread as a point of illustration in several of his sermons. In 1951,
Graham produced a pamphlet, titled “Christianism vs. Communism” for wide distribution that
illuminates this point:
In Korea the blood of American soldiers is being shed every day to hold back this
philosophy of Karl Marx. The communist philosophy has infiltrated into every
country of the world, including America. Communism is on the march.
Everywhere we hear the tread of its armed feet and everyone wonders what lies
ahead…This Bible is not only a Bible recording historical events, but it also
pronounces with accuracy the events that are yet to come. There are strong
indications that the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters of Ezekiel are devoted
almost entirely to the tremendous rise of Russia in the latter days. There are
strong indications in the Bible that in the last days a great sinister anti-Christian
movement will arise. At this moment it appears that communism has all the
earmarks of this great anti-Christian movement. Communism could be only a
shadow of a greater movement that is yet to come. However, it carries with it all
the indications of anti-Christ. Almost all ministers of the gospel and students of
71
the Bible agree that it is master-minded by Satan himself who is counterfeiting
Christianity.14
Graham repeated variations of this perspective in most of his crusades, commentary, and
publications in the 1950s. The feature of Graham’s that complicates our understanding of his
strict adherence to a complete commitment to American anti-communist sentiment is his
occasional critique of sinfulness in America. Graham declared several points through the 1950s
that flew in the face of American exceptionalism’s greatest hallmarks. He boasted of God’s lack
of any special favor toward either Americans or their nation. He suggested that communism’s
spread very well might be a sign of God’s judgment upon America’s sinful behavior. He
cautioned his crusade audiences against maintaining a holier-than-thou mentality and warned of
Americans’ delusions of being collectively immune from God’s judgments.15
In cases where Graham participated in such discourse, it typically preceded a description
of the importance of salvation through Jesus Christ. However, his perspectives suggest that
Graham was not a cold warrior in the sense that he used the religious framework of Cold War
descriptions to sidestep or overlook sin in America. In every other facet of opposition to
communism, Graham was undeniably on board. He held that communism needed to be defeated.
Graham even demonstrated instances of using Scripture to justify armed conflict with
communists. On the eve of the Korean War, Graham wrote to President Harry Truman: “The
Bible many times urges us to be prepared for war, and Jesus Himself predicted that there would
14
Graham, “Christianism vs. Communism,” Pamphlet, 1951. “Duplicates by and about
Billy Graham” Box. BGCA. Graham made comparisons of America, democracy, or capitalism
with good and communism with evil often. For a further discussion of these juxtapositions, see
Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares, 84-86.
15
“The New Evangelist,” Time, 25 (October, 1954): 60; cited in Finstuen, Original Sin
and Everyday Protestants, 129.
72
be wars and rumors of wars till the end of time.” Furthermore, Graham urged Truman to, “total
mobilization to meet the communist threat, at the same time urging the British Commonwealth
of Nations to do the same.” Graham then added: “The American people are not concerned with
how much it costs the taxpayer if they can be assured of military security.”16 Over the course of
the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, Graham supported the option of using military
force against communism. As with most Americans, his calls for the exchange of fire diminished
as the nuclear stalemate intensified. In this regard, Graham called for spreading the message of
Christ as the primary weapon in the fight against communism rather than emphasize military
action.17
Graham’s prescriptions for how to deal with communism elicited both competing views
and lack of unanimity within the larger American Protestant community concerning America’s
Cold War rival. Toward the end of Eisenhower’s first term, Graham’s public assessments of
communism drew criticism from preachers and pastors across the nation. Christian Century and
Time magnified Billy Graham’s place in this dialogue and opened the discussion to a larger,
national audience. In July of 1956, Time published a piece on the matter that opened with the
question, “Is ubiquitous Billy Graham good for Christianity?” For the negative, Union
Theological Seminary professor Reinhold Niebuhr, who Time claimed, “[had] done more than
any man in the U.S. to hose away the froth of religious liberalism with the cold high-pressure
stream of neo-orthodox polemic,” found Graham too simplistic in his theology. Niebuhr
concluded that Graham, “thinks the problem of the atom bomb could be solved by converting the
16
Letter from Graham to Harry S. Truman, July 30, 1950, Presidential Correspondence,
Harry S. Truman, 1949-1952, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, Independence,
MO.
17
The history of anti-communism in America is complex. For an overview of American
interactions with anti-communist sentiment in the 1950s, see Wacker, America’s Pastor, 231-234
and 380n160.
73
people to Christ, which means that he does not recognize the serious perplexities of guilt and
responsibility, and of guilt associated with responsibility, which Christians must face.” In this,
Niebuhr found Graham at fault for adhering to a “pietistic moralism” framework. Niebuhr
publicly voiced his discontent with Graham at several instances throughout the 1950s. More
often than not, Niebuhr’s critique centered upon Graham’s lack of dealing with larger issues of
justice. However, Niebuhr was also a revered public intellectual who recognized his own public
perception eclipsed by a younger, attractive, and immensely popular evangelist.18
As the Cold War progressed, Graham continued to describe communism in dark
characterizations. He also advocated for spreading the Gospel as the best means of dealing with
the communist threat to America. The shift from advocating military confrontation, as in his call
for intervention in Korea, to endorsing evangelism as the greatest weapon in the fight against
communism was not merely for show. Graham expressed this position in places outside of the
public eye. In late 1957, Graham wrote to President Eisenhower, “If our hope lies only in our
terrifying weapons then we have little hope.” Graham also added, “The American people need to
be encouraged to look to God who is the source of all our spiritual and moral strength.” As the
Cold War quickly became a nuclear stalemate, Graham frequently called for spiritual weapons in
prayer and conversion over military confrontation.19
Billy Graham and American Foreign Policy
Billy Graham’s stance on American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union in the early
Cold War years is not clear-cut. Like many Americans, Graham’s views of the perceived
18
“Billy and the Theologians,” Time, 46 (July, 1956): 51.
Letter from Billy Graham to President Dwight Eisenhower, December 2, 1957.
Presidential Correspondence: Dwight David Eisenhower, 1952-1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower
Presidential Library, Abilene, KS.
19
74
communist menace remained constant between the end of World War II and the most intense
years of the Civil Rights Movement, yet his thoughts on how to proceed in light of the standoff
varied through the years. As the Korean War intensified, Graham felt that President Truman
needed to either commit fully to waging war in Korea and see the intervention through to
victory—or get out entirely. Graham had no qualms with war if they fit his standards for
justification. This point revealed itself several times in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Indeed, his
unabashed support for American policy in the early years of the Vietnam War support this
observation. Yet, in the 1950s, as in the late 1960s, Graham’s support for the use of military
force tapered off. The best categories of interpretation for identifying Graham’s perspective of
foreign policy during the Eisenhower Administration are twofold: the situation in Formosa and
Graham’s association with the White House.
The situation in Formosa in the early 1950s was turbulent for America, Mainland China,
Chinese nationalists within Formosa, and the U.N. Like other regions that represented political,
cultural, and military battlefields of the Cold War by proxy, Formosa came to symbolize the
struggle between the democracy of the West and the communism of the Soviet Union. The
reason that the island of Formosa came to wield such a prominent place in America’s foreign
policy had much to do with the complicated nature of its international status.
The history of America’s postwar policy toward Formosa, like many of America’s
postwar relationships, began before the end of World War II. Legal precedent was set with the
Cairo Declaration of December 1, 1943 when President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek determined that all of the territories that
Japan had absorbed would be returned to the Republic of China. In the 1945 Potsdam
Proclamation, Prime Minister Churchill, President Chiang, and President Harry Truman declared
75
that the stipulations of the Cairo Declaration would be upheld and that Japanese sovereignty
would be limited to specific islands that the authors saw fit. In 1951, when the Treaty of Peace
was signed with Japan—which neither the Soviet Union nor China signed—a provision was
included which renounced Japan’s right to Formosa and Pescadores. Since Formosa had been
held by Japan since China ceded the territory in 1895, the Treaty of Peace that was signed with
Japan effectively left Formosa without a controlling nation-state. When fighting broke out in
Korea in 1950, President Truman authorized the U.S. Seventh Fleet to patrol the strait between
Formosa and China with the intention of preventing armed conflict between the Chinese at
Formosa and the mainland, communist Chinese nation. Though Americans in the 1950s would
have welcomed an end of communism in “Red” China, the U.S. government was not prepared to
aid a Chinese Nationalist invasion of mainland China. Though brief, this situation was nearly
always at the forefront of discussions centered upon admitting China to the United Nations.
Along with the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, Formosa’s fate was closely followed in the
foreign policy circles of many Western nations. As such, the developments surrounding China,
Formosa, Quemoy, and Matsu, also became topics of discussion for many American religious
leaders.20
Many Americans viewed the small islands of Quemoy, Matsu, Pescadores, and the larger
island of Formosa as strategic and friendly areas in a region in the throes of communistic
struggle. While some favored Formosa’s invasion of the communist, “Red” China mainland,
most were hesitant. The majority, however, found the set of islands off of the coast of China to
be too valuable to lose to communism. Graham remained neutral, publicly. He offered his
20
Most of the background information on the history of American foreign policy toward
Formosa derived from Arthur Dean, “United States Foreign Policy and Formosa,” Foreign
Affairs 33 (April, 1955): 360-375.
76
unqualified support for foreign policy, privately, in several instances. For example, Graham
wrote to Eisenhower in 1954 to let the President know that he had been praying for him as the
President wrestled with the “Indo-China problem.” Graham assured the President that, “whatever
your ultimate decision, I shall do my best through radio and television to make my contribution
in selling the American public.” In closing, Graham offered, “My private opinion is that IndoChina must be held at any cost.”21
There are other sources that point to Graham’s stance on Formosa and China. During the
height of American anxiety over communism in the 1950s, L. Nelson Bell loomed large in
Graham’s decision making. Bell, like many other Americans in general and evangelical
Christians in particular, was diametrically opposed to America’s formal recognition of China and
China’s admission to the U.N. Coupled with Graham’s speaking tours of East Asia, which
bypassed China, and also Graham’s inclusion of China in his sermons as one of the regions
where communism loomed large, it remains safe to identify Graham as one who opposed China,
supported U.S. efforts in Formosa, and spoke against communism in all regions of the world
where it existed.22
Aside from Graham’s thought concerning American policy itself, the evangelist’s
relationship with the White House offers another facet of Graham’s role in Cold War affairs.
Graham’s interaction with sitting presidents began during the administration of Harry S. Truman.
21
Letter from Billy Graham to President Dwight Eisenhower, May 10, 1954. Presidential
Correspondence: Dwight David Eisenhower, 1952-1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.
22
For Bell’s attitude toward China, see letter from L. Nelson Bell to W.P. Strube,
December 1, 1958. “Christian Anti-Communist Movement, 1958-1961.” General
Correspondence Box. BGCA. For Graham’s tour of East Asian nations and territories, see letter
from Billy Graham to President Dwight Eisenhower, January 7, 1956. Presidential
Correspondence: Dwight David Eisenhower, 1952-1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.
77
Having been granted a meeting with President Truman, Graham left a sour taste in Truman’s
mouth when he reenacted the prayer that he had held in the Oval Office for reporters to see on
the White House lawn immediately after leaving Truman’s presence. Although Graham received
sharp criticism for his actions, the symbolism of his message stuck: America needs God. In this,
Graham paved the way for the uptick in public displays of civil religion for the remainder of the
decade.23
Graham’s relationship to the Office of the President was mutually beneficial during the
Eisenhower Administration. It was during Eisenhower’s two terms in office that Graham
established himself as a nationally recognized evangelistic force, a leader that spoke for many
Americans, and a shaper of national dialogue. As Graham’s ministry and popularity grew
between 1953 and 1961, his actions and public pronouncements did much to shape anticommunist discourse and intensify the mainstream acceptance and embracing of civil religion.
Though Graham’s evangelistic message had the specific goal of converting non-believers to
followers of Jesus Christ, his characterizations of the Cold War bolstered what political scientist,
historian, and journalist William Lee Miller described as “religion-in-general.” As sociologist
Will Herberg described, between 1949 and 1953, Bible distribution increased by 140 percent in
America. Approximately four-fifths of adult Americans believed that the Bible was the revealed
word of God. Yet, only 53 percent of those polled could name the first four books of the New
23
Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics,
and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011), 173;
and Wacker, America’s Pastor, 24 and 27.
78
Testament. Herberg concluded that America seemed to him to be both the most religious and
most secular of all the nations on earth.24
It was this great wave of faith in faith that Graham rode upon in the early years of his
career. As President, Eisenhower took advantage of this swell of religious sentiment for his
approval, agenda, and support of domestic and foreign objectives. All in all, Eisenhower used
this national, revivalistic theme well. The years of his Administration were relatively
comfortable ones for many Americans. Conflict was avoided in China and Vietnam. The Korean
War ended. Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were eased. Yet this
pervasive religiosity reared its head in nearly every facet of executive action. In many of these
displays of civil religion, Graham could be found. Eisenhower echoed many of the good versus
evil descriptions of the Cold War that Graham outlined. Eisenhower obliged when Congress
adopted a resolution in 1952 that the president proclaim a National Day of Prayer once a year.
He began the first Presidential Prayer Breakfast in 1953. In many of Eisenhower’s public
displays of religiosity, be it speeches, breakfasts, or luncheons, Billy Graham was frequently
present.25
Graham’s presence at many of Eisenhower’s public displays of religion mattered
immensely to millions of Protestant Americans. It was the culmination of Eisenhower’s civil
religion, Graham’s evangelism, Americans’ fears of communism, and America’s “religion-in
24
William Lee Miller, Piety Along the Potomac: Notes on Politics and Morals in the
Fifties (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), 128; Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An
Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 1-3; Richard Hughes,
Myths America Lives By (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 170.
25
Pierard and Linder, 190-197; Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Bev Shea, and Billy
Graham’s presence at prayer gatherings were covered extensively. Some of the most extensive
coverage was carried in the “Bulletin of International Christian Leadership.” For such
publications, see issues from 1953-1957, in box “Fellowship Foundation Newsletters, 19421970,” BGCA.
79
general” that created so sharp a divide in many Americans’ eyes on the perception of the world
having been divided into good and evil. Though Graham did not specifically and intentionally
outline his stance on most foreign policy matters, his relationship to the White House and his
support of Eisenhower did much to influence American support for the Eisenhower-Dulles
foreign policies of the 1950s.
Conclusion
From the short descriptions of Graham’s association with American leadership and his
view of the Formosa situation, several points stand out. First, Graham acted as a vehicle for
evangelical concerns with or support for existing foreign policy. While the topics that Graham
spoke about largely concerned policies other than those directed toward the Soviet Union, his
commentary on communism and his outlook on Formosa find Graham to be, like many
Americans in the 1950s, one who was opposed to the spread of Soviet influence and supportive
of the containment of communism to the areas it existed in Asia. At the same time, Graham
reflected the changing thought of many evangelical Christians concerning America’s strategies
for supporting American interests overseas and for dealing with communism. At the outset of
both the Cold War and the Vietnam War, American attitudes were exceedingly more hawkish
than years into either conflict. In this, Graham was of the same mind. The concern that many
Americans felt over China, the United Nations, Japan, nuclear holocaust, and communistic
takeover were also realized in Graham. His changing mind on the handling of the Cold War
through official US policy was not unique. In many ways, it was very much in line with the
perspectives of the majority of Americans.
80
In more subtle ways, Graham’s relationship to the White House can be used to examine
his stance on foreign policy. Of the eleven presidents that Graham had a relationship with,
Truman was the most unique. Indeed, Truman was the one president that did not care for
Graham, felt no need to court Graham for approval, and generally dismissed Graham for several
reasons. From the presidency of Eisenhower on, however, Graham was a welcomed individual in
the White House. Many presidents used Graham’s popularity and position of public prominence
for personal gain, political currency, and national goals. In this, Graham typically supported each
sitting president in customary and polite ways. In concert with Eisenhower, however, Graham
furthered American foreign policy by offering to support the desires of Eisenhower’s campaigns.
He also exacerbated the groundswell of civil religion by promoting Eisenhower’s religiosity.
81
CHAPTER 5
REINHOLD NIEBUHR, NEO-ORTHODOXY, AND THE EARLY
COLD WAR
Many of Reinhold Niebuhr’s close friends, and some distant, intelligent outsiders,
regularly described Niebuhr as a prophet. Niebuhr was, admittedly, embarrassed by this title. An
incredibly publicly engaged individual, Niebuhr was too humble and self-critical to accept such
esteemed terms of endearment. The fact that so many thought of Niebuhr as such a prolific
individual speaks to his mastery of a wide range of subjects. In matters concerning the
contemporary Christian life, international relations, ethics, diplomacy, and morality, many of
Niebuhr’s prescriptions were timely and on point. While many of Niebuhr’s perspectives on a
range of issues remain important and insightful to this day, this chapter demonstrates what
Niebuhr thought of the Soviet Union during the Eisenhower Administration. More specifically,
this chapter assesses Niebuhr’s thought concerning U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union
during the years of the Eisenhower presidency (1953-1961).
Reinhold Niebuhr was instrumental in shaping the opinions of many American
intellectuals and government leaders regarding U.S. foreign policies toward the Soviet Union in
the early decades of the Cold War. George F. Kennan (1904-2005), who is credited with
conceiving America’s Cold War foreign policy of containment, wrote to Niebuhr, “I don’t think
I’ve ever learned from anyone things more important to the understanding of our predicament, as
82
individuals, and as a society, than those I have learned, so to speak, at your feet.”1 Outspoken in
his denunciation of communism, Niebuhr fit neatly into the prevailing mode of American
ideology. During the Eisenhower Administration, Niebuhr applied his understanding of
Christianity, morality, ethics, and sin to foreign policy in a way that drew the attention of many
important figures and diplomats in the 1950s. Niebuhr’s unique understanding of ethics,
Christianity, and diplomacy was a major factor of consideration for many American intellectuals
and policymakers over the course of the 1950s.2 Niebuhr’s comprehensive approach to foreign
policy and international affairs was the sum of a life’s work examining major philosophical
questions; yet, his thought can be boiled down to the core issues of love and justice.
This chapter demonstrates that Niebuhr’s emphasis on love and justice served as the basis
of his perspective of the Soviet Union as well as his approaches to Christianity and foreign
policy. Through a discussion of Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, his position as a public intellectual,
his break from theological liberalism and subsequent embrace of Neo-Orthodoxy, and his
commentary on foreign policy and international affairs, Niebuhr’s understanding of love and
justice reveals itself to be the fundamental mode of his thought and overarching worldview. The
best place to begin in examining Niebuhr’s interaction with American foreign policy is with a
brief overview of his philosophical understanding.
1
Letter from Kennan to Niebuhr, April 12, 1966. “Papers of Reinhold Niebuhr” Box 49,
“George Kennan 1966” Folder, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C. (hereafter, “Niebuhr Papers, LOC”).
2
For example, see letter of praise from Dwight Bradley, Director of The Religious
Associates of the National Citizens Political Action Committee to Niebuhr, March 22, 1948.
“General Correspondence” Box 2, “Bra-Bri” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
83
Christian Realism
Niebuhr’s academic interest in theology, sin, and society between his college years and
World War II, or roughly 1910 to 1945, account for his creation and embrace of Christian
Realism.3 The fact that many scholars disagree among themselves on particular questions related
to Niebuhr’s Christian Realism attests to the complexity of its scope. Put succinctly, Christian
Realism is a branch of philosophic thought that was developed by Niebuhr in the 1940s and
1950s and found that the kingdom of heaven cannot be realized on earth because of the innately
corrupt tendencies of society. It did not adhere to any specific position on political issues.4 In
Christian Realism, individuals’ sinful nature is a perpetual barrier to either attaining any kind of
society that resembles a utopia or realizing heaven on earth.5 Moreover, due to the injustices that
arise on earth, an individual is therefore forced to compromise the ideal of the kingdom of
heaven on earth. Under the guise of Christian Realism, Niebuhr argued that human perfectibility
could never happen. The major emphasis of Christian Realism is on the sinfulness of humanity.6
Niebuhr saw sin as something that was inherent to every living person. Because of this,
Niebuhr rejected post-millennial theology, or the belief that Christ will return to establish heaven
on earth after a period of one thousand years of peace. The focus then became one of dealing
3
For a thorough assessment of Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, see Robin Lovin, Reinhold
Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
4
Jon Butler, Grant Wacker, and Randall Balmer, Religion in American Life: A Short
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 277.
5
Niebuhr does use Christian Realism as a launching pad for anti-communist diatribes. An
example of Christian Realism’s emphasis on pride or self-love as the basis of sin coupled with
seething anti-communist rhetoric can be found in: Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political
Problems (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953).
6
The Christian Realism of Niebuhr should not be confused with the Christian Realism
associated with President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. For a brief discussion of Jimmy Carter,
Christian Realism, foreign policy, and diplomacy, see Gary Smith, “Jimmy Carter: A Progressive
Evangelical Foreign Policy,” The Review of Faith and International Affairs 9 (December 2011):
61-70.
84
with the injustices of the world rather than improving society for the ultimate goal of ushering in
the return of Christ. The only real demands of Christian Realism’s subscribers were that they
follow a middle path, according to historian Richard Fox, “of utopianism and resignation.”7
Christian Realism fit with Niebuhr’s Neo-Orthodoxy and served as the basis of his theological
belief, as well as his intellectual popularity, from the time of Niebuhr’s introduction of it until his
death. Evidence of this Christian Realism logic appears in Niebuhr’s characterization of
communism, his approaches to foreign policy, and his views on the Christian life.
The Soviet Threat and U.S. Foreign Policy
Niebuhr’s spoken and written pronouncements over the course of the 1950s reflected the
intellectual ground that he had come to develop over the course of the preceding decades. His
Neo-Orthodoxy and Christian Realism were on full display in most, if not all, of his public
commentary. Yet, Niebuhr also changed his tone with the course of contemporary events. As the
perceived threat of nuclear war waned over time, so did Niebuhr’s rhetoric. His emphasis on the
suddenness of impending atomic catastrophe dissipated through the years of the 1950s and he
gradually called for co-existence with the Soviet Union. It is easy for many to point to this slight
shift in Niebuhr’s views and identify contradictions in his thought. Yet, Niebuhr considered
many of his foundational beliefs concerning Christian and secular life to remain central despite
changes in the strategy or approaches to diplomacy that he emphasized. Niebuhr was not
contradictory in his views of foreign policy or the Soviet Union. Like many Americans—
especially those directly involved in policy planning—Niebuhr underwent a period of shifting
perspectives on the Cold War.
7
Ibid.
85
One of the most apparent changes in Niebuhr’s thought can be seen in his perception of
the threat of nuclear war decreasing over time with the Soviet Union. In the years immediately
following World War II, Niebuhr pictured the global stage of affairs in grim descriptions. In
1951, Niebuhr declared, “Our margins of safety are obviously much slimmer than a decade ago
when the Nazi fury was at its worst.” He continued, “Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the
present situation lies in the fact that the ‘play’ is now primarily in the hands of the opposition.
The Soviets can overrun Europe at any time.” Niebuhr claimed, “The two powerful deterrents to
such a venture are the fear of our atomic weapons and their economic weakness. Atomic
weapons could presumably damage Russia more than she could damage us. We must arrive,
therefore, at the conclusion that a relaxation of the world tension by possible bargains is
extremely difficult.”8
By the time that Eisenhower took office, however, Niebuhr had shifted to a noticeably
different stance. As early as 1954 Niebuhr replaced his emphasis on caution and tension with the
notion of coexisting with the Soviet Union. He retained the necessity of a need for firmness
against communism and continued to describe communists in general as atheistic and godless.
However, the willingness to ease tensions took a paramount place in Niebuhr’s prescriptions.9
Specifically, Niebuhr sought to raise awareness in America concerning the willingness to accept
China into the United Nations.10
The matter of United Nations’ acceptance of China into its formal ranks was a matter of
great importance during the Eisenhower Administration. The factors surrounding China’s
8
Reinhold Niebuhr, “Ten Fateful Years,” Christianity and Crisis XI, no. 1 (February 5,
1951): 1-2.
9
Niebuhr, “The Limits of Military Power,” The New Leader 38 (May 1955): 16-17.
10
Niebuhr, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis XIII, no. 24 (January 25, 1954):
186.
86
admission were hotly debated in America. From policymakers in Washington D.C. to the general
American public following along in the nation’s newspapers, several perspectives existed on
whether or not to allow China into the United Nations. This wide array of opinions for and
against China’s entry existed within the American religious community as well. Those Protestant
leaders who tended to uphold more theologically and politically conservative views tended to
support keeping China out of the United Nations whereas theologically and politically liberal
Protestant leaders tended to support China’s admission to the United Nations. Across the
political and theological spectrum, however, most Protestant preachers, pastors, professors, and
theologians supported some kind of American intervention in Formosa and the Formosa Strait.
Niebuhr fell into the overall mindset of those politically and theologically liberal Protestant
leaders in his support for China’s admission to the United Nations.11
By the mid-1950s, Niebuhr conveyed more optimism than he had since the ending of
World War II. He felt comfortable expressing his opinion that the Soviet Union did not desire a
general war and the prospect of mutual annihilation seemed a thing of the past. Moreover, the
“big thaw” brought about by the Geneva Conference and the Atoms for Peace Conference held
toward the end of 1955 prompted Niebuhr to remark: “There is more than a ray of additional
hope in [these] development[s]. Altogether the future seems less menacing than it did only one
short year ago.”12 His perspective on the Soviet Union was altered further between 1956 and
1958. The events of Stalin’s death in 1953 and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1974)
rise to power between 1954 and 1955 prompted Niebuhr to adopt a cautiously optimistic stance
11
Letter from Will-Matthus Dun to Niebuhr, March 12, 1955, Box 2, “Christian Action”
Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
12
Niebuhr, “American Leadership in the Cold War,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no. 17
(October 18, 1954): 129-130; Niebuhr, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis XV, no. 15
(September 19, 1955): 114.
87
concerning the Soviet Union. This perspective was a blend of the more aggressive position he
held in the late 1940s and early 1950s coupled with the optimistic position of the early and mid1950s.
In late 1956, Niebuhr examined the pros and cons of a Khrushchev-led Russia and
ultimately declared the only good news to be that “the communist empire is in the process of
decay.”13 Niebuhr considered the encouraging aspects of the Khrushchev triumph in the Soviet
Union: the dethroning of Georgy Malenkov (1902-1988), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986), and
Lazar Kaganovich (1893-1991) along with the delivering of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in
February of 1956. Niebuhr found all of these things to be questionable for the future trajectory of
the Soviet Union and beneficial to the United States. Niebuhr also considered the troublesome
aspects of a Soviet Union under Khrushchev; namely the crackdown on Hungarian rebels in
1956.14 The years between Stalin’s death and Khruschchev’s ascendancy (1953-1956) were years
of uncertainty and turmoil in the larger Soviet Union. All in all, Niebuhr found this period of
transition in Soviet leadership as helpful to America’s position in the Cold War.
With regard to Khrushchev’s attitude toward China, Niebuhr determined: “We do not
know how successful he will be with the Chinese. But the difference in his temper and in theirs
indicates both a difference between a revolution leavened by pragmatism and a revolution in
which ‘old believers’ are still dominant.” Niebuhr went on to conclude: “It also suggests
potential differences of interest between Russia and China, which we ought to exploit, rather
than ignore.” This final perspective of an uneasy willingness to coexist peacefully is the final
13
Niebuhr, “There is No Peace,” Christianity and Crisis XVI, no. 20 (November 26,
1956): 158.
14
Ibid.; Niebuhr, “Changes in the Kremlin,” Christianity and Crisis XVI, no. 14 (August
5, 1957): 107.
88
view Niebuhr held throughout the Eisenhower Administration. Although elements of the three
perspectives he adopted can be found at varying instances throughout the 1950s, Niebuhr largely
moved from a perspective of immanent war in the early 1950s to one of optimism in the mid1950s to one of guarded coexistence during the late 1950s and early 1960s.15
Niebuhr was comfortable in the role of public commentator. In the late 1950s he
maintained his demand for coexistence with the Soviet Union and turned his attention to the
barriers to peace demonstrated by Americans. He urged Americans to shed any clichés of Soviet
world domination in the hopes of fully grasping the predicament that both America and the
Soviet Union were entangled: neither power was going away and neither power wanted war.16
Niebuhr argued in Christianity and Crisis under article titles such as “The Long Haul of
Coexistence” and “Coexistence Under a Nuclear Stalemate” that war preparation and hysteria
over Soviet world domination were incorrect responses to effectively dealing with the reality of
the Cold War.17 Instead, Niebuhr suggested that America needed to coexist with the Soviet
Union in order to outlast it: “This is not a matter of great exertions for a decade but a matter of
living under stress for a century or two. We must acquire the humility to be sufferable to our
friends and the patience to outlast an unscrupulous foe.”18 Though the Cold War ended sooner
15
Niebuhr, “Khrushchev and the Cold War,” no date, unpublished essay, Box 16,
“Speech, Article, and Book File,” “Khrushchev and the Cold War” Folder, Niebuhr Papers,
LOC.
16
Niebuhr, “Uneasy Peace or Catastrophe,” Christianity and Crisis XVIII, no. 7 (April
28, 1958): 54-55.
17
He also argued that the creation of a world government as a peaceful solution to the
Cold War was just as dangerous as nuclear war in: Niebuhr, “A Protest Against a Dilemma’s
Two Horns,” World Politics 2, no. 3 (April, 1950): 338-344; “The Illusion of World
Government,” Foreign Affairs 27, no. 3 (April, 1949): 379-388.
18
Niebuhr, “American Leadership in the Cold War,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no. 17
(October 18, 1954): 129-130; Niebuhr maintains this position in his book The Structure of
Nations and Empires (New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1959), 282: "The task of
89
than a century or two beyond its origins, Niebuhr was closer in his calculations than many who
felt that the war would drastically heat up and climax in an exchange of missiles.
Niebuhr’s shifting stance on the Soviet Union translated seamlessly to his views of
appropriate U.S. foreign policy. As Niebuhr came to the conclusion that neither the U.S. nor the
U.S.S.R. appeared willing to initiate a nuclear war, he did not rule war on a lesser scale
completely out of the equation. Indeed, Niebuhr’s belief that the U.S. must retain its arsenal of
atomic weapons was a mainstay of his commentary throughout the 1950s.19 Before Niebuhr
began to call for coexistence, however, he reiterated the importance of America’s need to be
prepared for conflict other than the exchange of nuclear strikes. In 1956, Niebuhr wrote:
“We face the temptation of drawing purely pacifist and dangerous conclusions
from the obvious fact that a nuclear war is unthinkable. But if we come to the
conclusion that this fact means that force is under all circumstances ruled out, the
Russians will only have to threaten force to persuade us to yield. We must risk
war in order to protect people from tyranny, or the Russians will take advantage
of us at every turn.”20
Even as Niebuhr emphasized national security above all else in the latter half of the 1950s, he
increasingly advocated for the relaxing of tensions. This significant move away from language
managing to share the world without bringing disaster on a common civilization must include, on
our part, a less rigid and self-righteous attitude toward the power realities of the world and a
more hopeful attitude toward the possibilities of internal developments in the Russian
despotism."
19
See letter from Niebuhr to Reverend Karl Baehr, which contains Niebuhr’s contention
that “peace rests upon an atomic stalemate.” October 22, 1956. “General Correspondence” Box
2, “Bae-Bark” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
20
Niebuhr, “There is No Peace,” Christianity and Crisis XVI, no. 20 (November 26,
1956): 158.
90
that bordered on calling for war preparation demonstrated a shift in Niebuhr’s thinking toward
diplomatic paths to mutual coexistence as paramount to peace.21
Niebuhr on Anti-Communism
Niebuhr was firmly against communism. His level of anti-communism was not nearly as
acerbic or passionately aggressive as most Americans. His penchant for demonstrating his
appreciation for America, which stemmed from being a man of German descent living in the
United States through both world wars, manifested itself in anti-communist rhetoric through the
1950s. Niebuhr’s anti-communism, though, had qualifications. Niebuhr opposed communism as
a model of social and political organization. He did not think it fair for the vast number of people
who lived in a communist state. At the same time, Niebuhr also opposed the level of anticommunist hysteria that he perceived in America.
Niebuhr demonstrated his concern over the level of anti-communism in America several
times. In the fall of 1952, he agreed to sign an American Democratic Action statement, “A
Statement on McCarthyism,” which featured prominent Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders
in an expression of chastisement directed at the “invidious threat” that McCarthy-led anticommunist rhetoric and action posed to the “freedoms of all Americans.”22 Niebuhr rebuked
Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist tactics and spoke against the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) practices at several instances. In one such example, Niebuhr observed
21
Niebuhr, “The Dismal Prospects for Disarmament,” Christianity and Crisis XVII, no.
15 (September 16, 1957): 113.
22
Letters exchanged between Otto Spaeth and Niebuhr, October 20, 1952 and October
23, 1952. “General Correspondence” Box 2, “Americans for Democratic Action” Folder,
Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
91
HUAC’s methods were “a little lower than McCarthy.”23 Niebuhr did, however, like the work
that the Senate Internal Security Committee was doing to root out communism in American
institutions. Niebuhr was, at once, against communism, but at the same time, also against
extreme measures that resulted in the unjustified labeling of innocent Americans as subversive or
threatening.
In the 1950s, Niebuhr fashioned himself a champion of levelheadedness amid the flurry
of rabid and tremendous anti-communist sentiment. Concerning Bishop Oxnam’s testimony
before HUAC, Niebuhr observed:
I think that the charges that Bishop Oxnam spent his week serving communism
and only Sundays serving God was fantastic. As was the hearing that they gave
him and the rather lame conclusion at which they arrived, that Oxnam was not a
communist. In this kind of a world these indiscriminate charges against “liberals,”
even those who had a certain softness toward the communist movement at one
time, hinders rather than helps ferreting out the real communists.24
Niebuhr made it a point to speak out against unwarranted discrimination that was
grounded in anti-communist fears. Moreover, he took action to remedy what he considered to be
heinous misjudgments by the government that were committed under the guise of anticommunist measures. In 1956, Niebuhr wrote to President Eisenhower to urge the release of
frozen Social Security payments to Jacob Mindel, a communist convicted under the Smith Act.
In the letter, Niebuhr asked, “Can our nation really gain anything in majesty, in moral stature, by
23
Letter from Niebuhr to H.H. Lippincott, January 29, 1954, “General Correspondence”
Box 8, “Li” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
24
Ibid.
92
these small acts of vindictiveness against dissenters, even if the dissenters were involved in a
conspiracy?”25
Similarly, Niebuhr requested that the President pardon two men, Henry Winston and
Gilbert Green, who were also imprisoned after having been convicted under the Smith Act.26
Niebuhr advocated for individuals arrested for violating the Smith Act without having engaged
in any act of consequence against the federal government. Niebuhr explained in a letter to
President Eisenhower that Winston and Green were, “a reminder of that short time ago when
Communists were jailed for the doctrines they preached rather than for acts of espionage,
sabotage or violence.” Niebuhr expanded on his plea: “Within the past year, the United States
Supreme Court and the courts have taken an increasingly dim view of the Smith Act.” Niebuhr
recalled that numerous convictions had been reversed and a number had been “set aside
completely.” Niebuhr concluded, “Strong and compelling doubts are now cast upon convictions
which were originally dubious as a firmer confidence is established in our Bill of Rights and
Constitutional guarantee.”27
Niebuhr recognized the weight that the label of “communist” carried with it. Comparable
to his support of Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam during Oxnam’s time spent in front of
the HUAC, Niebuhr’s advocacy for individuals who were named communist remained at the
forefront of his time. In 1957, Niebuhr wrote to Central Intelligence Agency director J. Edgar
25
Niebuhr to Eisenhower, February 3, 1956, and two letters from Niebuhr to Eisenhower,
undated, “Correspondence” Box 5, “Dwight D. Eisenhower” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
26
Officially titled the Alien Registration Act of 1940, the Smith Act, named after U.S.
Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia, set penalties and fines for two or more persons
who conspired to advocate for or commit the violent or forcible overthrow of the government.
This Act was revised several times and can now be found in its current form at 18 U.S. Code
2385, as of 2000.
27
Ibid.
93
Hoover (1895-1972) to urge the withdrawal of the label of communist from Niebuhr’s
acquaintance, Mr. A. J. Muste.28 Indeed, Niebuhr was thoroughly consumed with the ripple
effects of American anti-communist sentiment. He remained involved in his own research of
international affairs, geopolitical strategies, and the relationship of international states with one
another vis a vis the communist-democratic tension. He continued to read as much as he could
on Russia, communism, and the larger sphere of the Soviet Union—sometimes ordering books
through the Columbia University bookstore when time was scarce.29
Keeping Niebuhr’s support for those individuals whom he perceived to be incorrectly
identified as communists in mind, Niebuhr was not completely against American efforts to
identify and eliminate communism within the United States. If anything, Niebuhr was more
sensitive to and aware of levels of pro-communist sentiment that demonstrated a dangerous or
treasonous edge than the typical American. He genuinely feared the potential worst-case scenario
of the Cold War. The changing structure of international relations due to Cold War tensions also
gave him pause. As an American professor and theologian living in the U.S. during the early
Cold War, he took steps to ensure his own name was not tainted with the doubt and concern cast
upon socialists and communist sympathizers. In 1954, he asked to be removed from the editorial
advisory board of the quarterly Armenian Affairs, “immediately,” because of the journal’s proSoviet leanings.30 He also took steps to disassociate himself from acquaintances that seemed to
Niebuhr too overtly radical in their pro-communist sentiment. More than the average American,
28
Niebuhr to Hoover, April 8, 1957, “Correspondence” Box 5, “J. Edgar Hoover” Folder,
Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
29
Niebuhr ordered four titles dealing with communism, in general, at the end of the
academic year in 1957, see letter from Niebuhr to Columbia Bookstore staff, May 13, 1957,
“Correspondence” Box 4, “COB-COL” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
30
Niebuhr to Edwin Wright, June 9, 1954, and Niebuhr to Charles Verantes, June 6,
1954, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers Box 2, “AN-AS” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
94
however, Niebuhr confidently and articulately called out the negative attributes of extreme anticommunism.
While Niebuhr remained proud of the country he lived in and cognizant of the pleasures
his life afforded him, he had no issue critiquing the unfavorable aspects of American life.
Perhaps more than anything, Niebuhr criticized both the hysteria and the complacency that the
Cold War cultivated in the American mind. He was also consistent in his views of America’s
tremendous power and position in global affairs. To Niebuhr, any approach to Cold War foreign
affairs or policy that dealt in extremes—be it overly hawkish and assertive or overly passive and
noncommittal—was harmful and irresponsible. More often than not, Niebuhr perceived
America’s handling of foreign relations, in general, as forceful. In an undated sermon titled
“Protestantism and the Crisis in Modern Civilization,” Niebuhr described America as a menace
to world peace due to the nation’s tremendous power, political naivety, moral hypocrisy, and its
sufficiency of economic forces.31 In short, Niebuhr thought America was a bully in world affairs.
Since the ending of World War II, Niebuhr found the U.S. to be manipulative and imposing
when furthering the nation’s interests abroad. It seemed to Niebuhr, in most instances, this
proliferation of American strength abroad came at the expense of less prominent and less
developed sovereign states.
Niebuhr had a negative view of America’s handling of the Suez Crisis (1956). In line
with Niebuhr’s perceived negative aspects of American hegemony in world affairs described
above, he found America’s reaction to the Suez Crisis unreasonable. Niebuhr felt that America’s
disassociation from Britain during the Suez Crisis hurt Britain and did not benefit America.
31
Reinhold Niebuhr, “Protestantism and the Crisis in Modern Civilization,” undated
sermon, “Speech, Article, and Book File” Box 14, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
95
Niebuhr also determined that distancing the nation from Britain during the Suez Crisis was an
effort to “exploit our colonial past,” despite the American belief that the country represented the
“palladium of democracy.” Because of the outcome of the Suez Crisis for Israel, the United
Kingdom, France, and Egypt, Niebuhr concluded:
We must try to profit by the lessons of history to the extent of knowing that the
unity of a nation or a community of nations is not guaranteed merely by free
elections, but by a responsible use of power by the hegemonous forces in the
community, including the community of nations. This problem is so difficult that
it would baffle even the most prudent statesman. That is why it is not being solved
by Eisenhower’s and Dulles’ slogans.
Moreover, Niebuhr denounced British responses to certain world events for the same reasons.
Niebuhr found British resentment over American “obtuseness” to territorial disputes across the
globe as a reason for the British “abortive venture in the Suez Crisis.” Niebuhr determined:
Unfortunately, their desperate answer was so wrong, that it did nothing to convict
us of our obtuseness. Indeed, it only served to accentuate the blindness of our selfrighteousness and left us as ever a blind giant tottering among the Lilliputians and
rejecting the guidance of other giants, less blind than we. Our failure to relate our
power creatively to the order and security of an alliance of free nations would be
catastrophic but for the fact that the Russians make all the opposite mistakes in
even greater proportions.
With American policies ranging from the Soviet Union to the Middle East, Niebuhr found
America’s superciliousness a stumbling block to the responsible use of power. He also found the
96
general attitude of Americans—to include policymakers—too arrogant to cultivate favorable
sentiment toward the United States around the world.32
Niebuhr on Christian Activity in Government
With an obvious increase in religious expression at the government level during the
course of the 1950s, many Americans came to embrace more frequent expressions of civil
religion from their elected officials. Niebuhr’s stance on Christianity’s relationship to
government was more complex. He advocated for the keeping of one’s political stances separate
from religious beliefs. In reality, Niebuhr’s staunch opposition to many Republican planks was
grounded in his theological study. While Niebuhr criticized those who applauded manifestations
of civil religion from representatives of government agencies, he participated in civil religion—
to an extent. Niebuhr railed against American government leaders’ use of religion as a tool in
the fight against communism and also against those who used the Bible to uphold certain
political convictions. He found these expressions too simplistic in grappling with the realities of
international relations. He did not, however, find that Christians should withdraw from political
participation.33
Niebuhr felt that American Christians had a responsibility to participate in the democratic
process as citizens of the United States. He felt it unwise, however, to hitch one’s religious
beliefs to partisan planks or political party aspirations. Niebuhr claimed:
32
Reinhold Niebuhr, “America: A Nation with Imperial Powers,” undated article,
“Speech, Article, and Book File” Box 15, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
33
For Niebuhr’s belief that Christians should be politically active and refrain from
“remov[ing] their religious life from political debate,” see letter from Niebuhr to Mrs. E.C.
Congdon, December 3, 1953, “General Correspondence” Box 3, “Americans for Democratic
Action” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
97
It is impossible to draw political decisions from one’s religious commitments, for
political decisions are very hazardous. I happen, in a general way, to accept what
is known as the New Deal program. That is, I believe that the sovereign power of
the state can be used for human welfare. I also recognize that there is a grave
danger of too much state power. Every political decision involves a dozen
contingent elements. We have to make them according to our best judgment and if
we are Christian we will have a certain amount of tolerance toward each other,
because we will recognize how frail the reason which arrives at these decisions,
and how much it is influenced by interest.34
Niebuhr was consistent in his contention that drawing a “straight line between a religious
conviction and a political party” was “hazardous,” yet the majority of his own comments on
communism and foreign policy toward the Soviet Union were grounded in the core concepts of
his own religious convictions; namely love and justice.35 Prior to assessing Niebuhr’s approach
to foreign policy, one must first grasp what forms American foreign policy toward the Soviet
Union took during Eisenhower’s two terms in office.
Eisenhower-Dulles Foreign Policies
By the end of World War II, the notion of containing the spread of communism had
reached an unprecedented height. As early as 1941, U.S. policymakers anticipated the problem
that Russia would pose in the postwar world. Yet, enlisting their help in defeating Germany took
priority over communism. By the war’s end, the creator of containment as a strategy, American
diplomat, political scientist, and adviser George F. Kennan, saw his approach to American
foreign policy embraced. Kennan coined the term “containment” in 1947 calling for a long-term,
34
Letter from Niebuhr to Charles Evans, October 27, 1952, “General Correspondence”
Box 5, “Ev” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
35
Letter from Niebuhr to William Gleditsch, Jr., November 8, 1956, “General
Correspondence” Box 5, “Gl” Folder; and letter from Niebuhr to Robert Latham, March 28,
1961, “General Correspondence” Box 8, “LA” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
98
“patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansion tendencies.”36 Containment took
many forms from 1947-1989, but it reigned supreme as the policy of choice for each
administration between Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan.
The policy of containment underwent many changes throughout the entirety of the Cold
War but can explained as being executed in two different forms: asymmetrical and symmetrical.
The asymmetrical approach was favored by President Dwight Eisenhower, his Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles, and Reinhold Niebuhr—among others. This form of containment sought to
confront the enemy at the time and place of one’s choosing rather than wait for a confrontation
or situation deemed vital to national security to arise. The essential thrust of this policy was
maintaining the initiative in military conflict. This approach can be seen in various military
operations in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and South America. The symmetrical approach
was one that sought to include the “periphery” of communism’s borders rather than focus on
points of greater military strength or buildup. It also attempted to broaden the narrowness of
choice that was evident in the asymmetrical approach: the choice between escalation and doing
nothing. The Kennedy Administration adopted this style of containment.37
Eisenhower and Dulles’ foreign policy was characterized as the “New Look” approach.
This policy took many forms, but is largely recognized by some of its major components:
brinksmanship and massive retaliation. Dulles and Eisenhower conceived of their New Look
strategy from the concept of containment. This strategy included such policy objectives as
"Rollback," or the atrophy of the Soviet Union's expansive borders and "Liberation," or the
36
George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs XXV (July,
1947): 575, quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of
American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 4.
37
Gaddis, 3-5.
99
removal of communist influence from Soviet Union satellite nations and the establishment of
democracies within them. This New Look policy was articulated in NSC-162/2 and incorporated
alliances, psychological warfare, covert operations, and the concept of "brinksmanship."
Brinksmanship was a part of the New Look strategy aimed at escalating threats of
warfare until a particular policy objective was obtained. Dulles' notion of massive retaliation
dismissed a perimeter defense as politically and realistically impossible. To match Soviet armies
or enforce a 20,000-mile line of defense along the Soviet Union's borders was untenable.
Massive retaliation, though, offered a solution in that it reserved the means to retaliate instantly
against points within the Soviet Union that would do the most damage and, in a way, serve as a
counter-action from America's military. This strategy freed the United States from responding to
particular incidents within specific geographic locations by leaving open the option to strike
whenever and wherever the most damage could be inflicted to deter further Soviet action. These
particular strategies fit into the New Look objective of achieving maximum deterrence of
communism at a minimum cost.
Niebuhr was generally supportive of Eisenhower politically and personally, yet was
critical at times of the Eisenhower-Dulles New Look foreign policy. This policy largely fit the
three aforementioned stages of Niebuhr’s perspectives on foreign relations with the Soviet Union
throughout the 1950s. He defended Dulles’ policy of brinksmanship.38 Niebuhr also applauded
Eisenhower’s efforts toward deescalating the tension as the 1950s progressed. However, Niebuhr
took issue with many finer points of Eisenhower and Dulles’ New Look strategy. For example,
Niebuhr disagreed with the perimeter defense that Eisenhower used as the basis of his foreign
38
Niebuhr, “There is No Peace,” 158.
100
policy in his immediate years as president as unfathomable.39 Niebuhr took issue with
Eisenhower’s perimeter defense strategy in places that were considered by Niebuhr to be “bloc
frontiers,” such as Korea, Germany, and the Taiwan Strait.
Niebuhr was also critical of issues larger than the particularities of certain foreign
policies. Specifically, Niebuhr found the greater, overarching American ideology concerning
foreign relations questionable. During a discussion of a paper that Niebuhr delivered to the
Theory of International Relations Meeting (where Niebuhr’s friend and international relations
expert Hans Morgenthau was present) Niebuhr described America’s ideological approach to the
Cold War as defective in that it “equates power with force and goodness with the absence of
force.” He had identified a trend in American foreign policy that recognized the lack of force as
positive and the use of force as negative. In several examples, Niebuhr expressed his
dissatisfaction with American approaches to the larger Cold War, policymakers’ strategies, and
official policy.40
Like other leading religious figures, Niebuhr objected to any political moves that were
seen as too soft on communism throughout Eisenhower’s two terms.41 Publicly, many nationally
recognized pastors, preachers, and theologians called, generally, for a tougher approach to
dealing with communism. Collectively, these “churchmen” represented a substantial and
important portion of Americans to government policymakers. Within this section, Niebuhr was
meaningful. There are very few studies of Niebuhr’s perspective on Eisenhower and Dulles’
foreign policy. In the scholarship that does exist, Niebuhr is commonly credited as having
39
Walter LeFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996 (New York: McGrawHill, 1997), 119.
40
“Theory of International Relations Meeting Proceedings,” January 14, 1957, “General
Correspondence” Box 4, “Cob-Col” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
41
William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 68, 76-79.
101
influenced foreign policy-makers with his Christian Realism-driven approaches to policymaking.
As the chair of the Americans for Democratic Action’s Foreign Policy Commission and
extensive background within government foreign policy circles, for instance, Niebuhr’s
perspectives carried weight. In 1946, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, William
Benton issued some of Niebuhr’s report concerning education during a press conference.42 In
1949, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff Director, George F. Kennan, brought
Niebuhr in for official staff meetings twice as a consultant in drawing up policy planning papers.
Those in positions of power regularly turned to Niebuhr for input on matters of American foreign
policy toward the Soviet Union.43
As Niebuhr’s currency as a legitimate consultant on matters of foreign policy grew in the
1940s and 1950s, so did his level of frankness. Niebuhr maintained a polite and professional air
when speaking of major figures in America’s hierarchy of leadership. Yet, his straightforward
responses to diplomatic and foreign affairs revealed dissatisfaction with Eisenhower and Dulles
policies as the 1950s wore on. In private correspondence, Niebuhr revealed his support for
Illinois Governor, and later Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson’s presidential
bids in 1952 and 1956. While Niebuhr’s voting record reveals that of a Democratic Party
supporter, he was not averse to voting outside of the Democratic ticket, based on the individual
whom Niebuhr found the most suitable. In 1956, Niebuhr confided to a trusted friend, “The
Eisenhower myth has achieved a new proportion of quite fantastic dimensions. I don’t know
42
Letter from William Benton to Niebuhr, October 14, 1946, “General Correspondence”
Box 2, “William A. Benton” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
43
For a discussion of his views on Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy, see Inboden, 47,
64, 68, 76-79, and 297. For discussions that emphasize Niebuhr’s influence, see Jason W.
Stevens, God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual History of America’s Cold War (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2010), 48, 61; and Gaddis, George F. Kennan, 359-360.
102
what it will do to the world.”44 Niebuhr found Eisenhower’s popularity disconcerting due to
Niebuhr’s previously highlighted uncertainty over the handling of the Suez ordeal, the New Look
policies, and America’s general direction forward in the Cold War.
Niebuhr found Eisenhower’s widespread appeal and popularity perplexing after
Eisenhower’s first term in office. As Eisenhower was campaigning for his second term, Niebuhr
summarized his thoughts on the faults in Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policies:
In foreign policy, the Administration has relied too much on military alliances,
and Mr. Dulles has confused the picture by his simple moral preachments and
distinctions, and thus the whole non-committed world of Asia and Africa have
been alienated. The new flexibility of Russian policy has contributed to this
alienation, so that American prestige has fallen catastrophically while the
Administration pretends that new developments have been prompted by our
strength. We need at least as much flexibility in our foreign policy as the Soviets
have revealed, and I think there is no way of getting it except by a Democratic
victory.45
Following Eisenhower’s repeat victory over Stevenson in 1956, Niebuhr wrote to Stevenson, “I
find it rather sad that the Eisenhower myth ran to such proportions that it was not possible to
penetrate it.” Niebuhr continued, “In the last days of the campaign the failure of the
Administration in foreign policy actually brought it votes as long as we were assured peace.”
Niebuhr worried, “I feel that we are confronting a new kind of isolationism which was well
illustrated by the inimicable [sic] conference between [Jawaharlal] Nehru and Eisenhower.”46
Isolationism, unwarranted mass popularity, and the application of incorrect policy to
foreign affairs were not the sole points that Niebuhr raised with Eisenhower’s actions during
44
Letter from Niebuhr to Reverend Paul R. Abrecht, November 8, 1956. “General
Correspondence” Box 2, “AL” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
45
Letter from Niebuhr to Ernest Lefever, June 19, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 8, “LefLew” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
46
Letter from Niebuhr to Stevenson, December 27, 1956. “Correspondence” Box 11,
“Stevenson, Adlai E.” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
103
Ike’s first four years in the Oval Office. Niebuhr also observed that Eisenhower represented the
Republican Party’s acknowledgement of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign and domestic
programs. Niebuhr observed that the “political phenomenon” of Eisenhower’s popularity was
especially significant. Niebuhr noticed that Eisenhower’s popularity was the summation of the
perceived successes of both domestic and foreign policy. Niebuhr suggested that Eisenhower
was the agent of the “acceptance by Republicanism of the major policies of the Roosevelt
revolution of the past two decades.” Niebuhr elaborated:
In foreign affairs that meant acceptance of the concept of our nation’s
responsibility for the health of the community of free nations. In domestic politics
the revolution meant a break with the doctrinaire laissez faire traditions of
Republicanism, and the intervention of political power in economic affairs for the
purpose of preventing violent fluctuations in the economic life, and of
establishing minimal standards of social security. Thus Eisenhower may be said to
stand for ninety-five percent of the foreign policy of the previous administration.47
Niebuhr’s perception of Eisenhower, then, was one that recognized the President as
skillful and politically savvy, for sure. Yet, Niebuhr also saw Eisenhower as the
embodiment of the Republican Party’s coopting Democratic policies of the 1930s and
1940s in the application of successful foreign and domestic programs to the realities of
America’s life in the 1950s. He found Eisenhower-Dulles New Look policies lacking. He
found America drifting toward isolationism in the midst of heightened consumerism. In
all of this, Niebuhr longed for a reassessment of American approaches to foreign relations
that would result in greater flexibility within America’s Cold War foreign policy.
47
Niebuhr, “The Phenomenon of President Eisenhower,” (April, 1955) The New Leader,
“Speech, Article, & Book File” Box 16, “The Phenomenon of President Eisenhower” Folder,
Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
104
Though Niebuhr demonstrated his positions with the self-assurance and
confidence of a successful elder statesman, obviously not everyone agreed with him all of
the time. In response to a statement issued by Niebuhr and Yale University’s Dean Liston
Pope, which appeared in Time in the spring of 1955, Dr. Will-Matthis Dun, the pastor of
Abilene, Texas’ Aldersgate Methodist Church, penned a scathing letter to Niebuhr over
the article’s support for a line of military protection in East Asia to be moved back from
Quemoy and Matsu to Formosa and the Pescadores. “The same logic which lies beneath
your argument that we should draw it at the Pescadores and Formosa can be used, were
we to allow [the communists] to gobble Quemoy and Matsu, when the turn comes for
them to turn their hand to the Pescadores and Formosa,” Dun growled. “It is the policy of
appeasement—it is the policy which can only be defended in the light of fear.” Dun
admitted further, “I love and esteem you—but, by golly, I certainly do not agree with you
on this matter. Thank God for Dulles—and I sincerely hope and pray that he and the
military keep the line drawn right [at Quemoy and Matsu].”48
Interestingly, most disagreement over foreign policy among the religious
community occurred over policy that was directed at East Asia. Religious leaders across
the country typically agreed with American foreign policies that considered Europe or the
larger Soviet Union. Any lack of support for foreign policy aimed at the Soviet Union or
European countries usually took the form of religious leaders who called for a broad and
terribly non-specific “tougher stance,” generally, against communism. In fact, studies
published in the 1950s noted that Protestant institutions that submitted statements to
48
Time article clipping, “Matsu-Quemoy Defense Not Morally Justified,” and letter from
Will-Matthus Dun to Niebuhr, March 12, 1955, Box 2, “Christian Action” Folder, Niebuhr
Papers, LOC.
105
government agencies concerning foreign policy tended to speak overwhelmingly to East
Asian rather than European policy. This was due, in large part, to the presence and
interests of America missionaries in Asia. The three individuals who serve as the focus of
this dissertation are no different. They, along with most noteworthy religious leaders in
the 1950s, spoke specifically and with greater frequency on American policy toward East
Asia. With America’s foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, most religious leaders—
and most Americans—accepted containment as the best policy framework for the Cold
War. With this realization in mind, one may better comprehend the acceptance and
continuation of the Cold War’s depiction as a battle of good versus evil in the minds of
many Americans.49
Niebuhr on Israel
The state of Israel represented a hot topic of debate within American policymaking
circles and, more broadly, American society in this period. The irresolute hesitancy over
confidence in Israel’s conception and continuation was apparent in Niebuhr’s own thought.
Niebuhr was supportive of the state of Israel, however, reluctantly so. In 1957, Niebuhr answered
a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist on matters pertaining to Israelis and the creation of a Jewish
homeland: “I think I too am an anti-Zionist but I am pro-Israel,” Niebuhr contended, “For the
Israel state once established has to be protected. Our great mistake was in establishing it.”50 This
statement represented a blatant departure from his claim a year earlier, when Niebuhr expressed
49
For a discussion of Protestant American engagement with the United States’ East Asia
policy compared to European or Soviet policy, see Ernest Lefever, “Protestants and United
States Foreign Policy, 1925-1954: A Study of the Response of National Protestant Leaders to the
Issues and Direction of U.S. Foreign Policy and the Theoretical Assumptions Which Underlay
That Response.” PhD. Dissertation, Yale University, 1956.
50
Letter from Niebuhr to Dr. John Newland, January 21, 1957, “Correspondence” Box 9,
“New Christian Advocate-New Mexico, University of” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
106
his support for the Zionist movement during WWII because he thought it important that “the
Jews should have a place to flee to from the Nazi terror.”51 In most cases, Niebuhr did outline his
support for the state of Israel. He continued to convey his sympathy for “the desire of the Jews to
establish a homeland after their experience with Nazism.”52 However, his ambiguity in justifying
Israel’s creation points to the uncertainty that Niebuhr wielded with regard to how and where the
post-WWII Jewish homeland was established.
Niebuhr professed his views on Israel and many other subjects through a variety of
channels. More often than not, Niebuhr saved some of his most thoughtful and provocative
writing for his own publications. His most widely recognized and most successful was
Christianity and Crisis. Niebuhr also oversaw the operation of a much lesser-known journal,
titled Christianity and Society. Very close to Christianity and Crisis in both scope and intended
audience, Christianity and Society never reached an audience broad enough to sustain itself,
financially. The journal was significant in its representation of Niebuhr’s shifting thought,
however. Niebuhr utilized the journal, renamed from Radical Religion to Christianity and
Society in 1940, as an intellectual defense of democracy. With Christianity and Society, Niebuhr
had hoped to shape the future of society after Hitler’s demise by advocating for a democratic
society that incorporated socialist approaches to the ownership of major productive enterprises.
The publication also represented his newest editorial venture after a lengthy and highly
51
Letter from Niebuhr to Lutfy Diah, April 12, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 4, “Di”
Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
52
Letter from RN to Archie Gillespie, September 25, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 5,
“Gi” Folder; Letter from Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal editor Dr. Abraham J.
Klausner to Niebuhr, April 20, 1955, “Correspondence” Box 3, “Ce” Folder, Niebuhr Papers,
LOC.
107
publicized split with The Christian Century’s editor Charles Clayton Morrison. Though
shortlived, Christianity and Society had a circulation of 850 in 1950.53
Within these journals, Niebuhr further established his place among some of the nation’s
leading intellectuals. His contributions also provoked disagreement within the American
Protestant community. Niebuhr’s criticism came as a result of comments made on Israel, NeoOrthodoxy, and government leadership. Niebuhr’s stance on war, however, tended to invite most
of the criticism that he received. In response to Niebuhr’s views of the inescapability of war and
the morality of a war justly waged, Charles Lyttle from the Meadville Theological School in
Chicago blamed Niebuhr for maintaining a “shocking disregard” for the “fundamental decencies
of your Christian ministry and professorship.” Lyttle denounced Niebuhr’s comments as “feeble
yet sinister sophistries about never being perfect or ever being able to achieve our ideals in their
perfection, therefore let us surrender to the lesser evil of war.” He further scolded Niebuhr:
From your books, sermons, and speeches, I know that this has been for years your
clever rationalization of a brazen apostasy from the plain teachings of Jesus
Christ: “Be ye perfect” –“Blessed are the peace-makers,” etc. You, though a
professor of Christian Ethics (!) have changed all that to “Be ye imperfect” –
“Blessed are the war-makers.” War can never be tolerated by any genuinely
Christian ethical system, any more than cannibalism or adultery can be
rationalized into a “lesser evil.” There are no greater evils! War is the sum of all
evil, in motive, in effect.54
53
“Correspondence” Box 2, “Christianity and Society, 1950” and “Christianity and
Society, 1952-1953” Folders, Niebuhr Papers, LOC. For further discussion of Niebuhr’s editorial
positions with these journals, see Fox, 196-197.
54
Letter from Charles Lyttle to Niebuhr, May 10, 1941,
108
Niebuhr’s perspectives of war, foreign nation states, and America’s role in the world were
grounded in his theological study and past foreign relations experience. At the core of Niebuhr’s
insight, lay the foundation of his thought—love and justice.
Love and Justice
The link that connected Niebuhr’s perspective of the Soviet threat with his foreign policy
prescriptions was Christian Realism. Niebuhr’s brand of Christianity informed his stance on
global affairs and emphasized justice, responsibility, and anti-complacency. This overarching
theme can be detected as the central component in most of Niebuhr’s speeches, interviews, and
writings over the course of the 1950s. Considering the tension that existed between the U.S. and
the Soviet Union in 1951, Niebuhr stated:
A Christian faith which declares that all of these horrible ambiguities would not
exist if only we loved each other, is on exactly the same level as a secular
idealism which insists that we could easily escape our predicament if only we
organized a world government. A Christian faith which solemnly assures men that
peace can be had by “men of good will” but is unavailable if we lack good will
can drive us to as complete a despair as the despair which secular idealism is
widely creating.55
Niebuhr essentially rejected pacifist approaches as any realistic or pragmatic ways of dealing
with foreign policy concerning the Soviet Union. Moreover, Niebuhr’s criticism of pacifism
went much deeper than a dispute with pacifist views of foreign policy. Niebuhr saw pacifists,
55
Niebuhr, “Ten Fateful Years,” Christianity and Crisis XI, no. 1 (February 5, 1951): 1.
109
especially pacifist-Christians, as subscribing to a distorted concept of Christian love in applying
an individual ethic to a collective situation.56
In what was arguably Niebuhr’s most concise and succinct explanation of the Christian
command of love, one can identify elements of Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, Neo-Orthodoxy,
and general approach to foreign policy:
Love has what might be called two dimensions: the vertical dimension of
perfection, of sacrificial love; and the horizontal dimension of concern for all
people, of concern for social justice and the balances by which it is maintained.
The pacifist comprehension of love seizes upon one of these two aspects. It makes
an absolute of sacrificial love at the expense of social responsibility. The pacifist
tends to regard the love command less as an over-arching principle which
confronts the Christian in all his relations than as a neat formula to use in
situations of violence. This is an inadequate, distorted view of the Christian
concept of love. This partial view leads the pacifist to exalt peace over the claims
of justice, when a choice between the two must be made. Non-violence is
regarded as a pure expression of love, while the struggle for justice is seen as a
rough and inferior approximation of love.57
Additionally, Niebuhr considered struggles for justice and peace as having the same sanction in
the commandment of love. Both presented a moral imperative, but for Niebuhr, justice reserved
the right to the prior claim. “While order may be conducive to justice, there can be no lasting
peace without justice,” Niebuhr wrote. “The Biblical concept is expressed by Isaiah: ‘And the
effect of righteousness will be peace’ (Is. 32:17). The just war position gains strength from the
consideration that the triumph of an unjust cause would defeat both the ends of justice and the
56
Niebuhr, “Is There Another Way?” The Progressive (October, 1955): 24, quoted in
D.B. Robertson, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr
(Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company, 1957), 299-301.
57
Niebuhr, “God Wills Both Justice and Peace,” Christianity and Crisis XV, no. 10 (June
13, 1955): 77-78.
110
future hope of peace.” In Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, the pacifist is socially irresponsible in
making an absolute of non-violence. More importantly, the pacifist is not true to the Christian
command of love when he or she regards violence as sinful, no matter how just the cause.58
This excerpt from a 1955 edition of Christianity and Crisis is crucial to understanding
Niebuhr’s acceptance of the morality of a just war. It is also essential in explaining the
importance of love and justice to Niebuhr; both in his approaches to foreign policy as well as to
his concepts of Christian duty and America’s national responsibility. To Niebuhr, passivity and
complacency were anathema. Justice as an outgrowth of sacrificial love and responsibility was
not only good, but also the only practical means of dealing with the tension that existed between
the United States and the Soviet Union. The premium placed on sacrificial love by pacifists in an
absolute sense was, to Niebuhr, inadequate and distorted. By equating justice with love, Niebuhr
effectively opened the door to accepting the notion of a just war. While Niebuhr admitted, “there
is no adequate definition [of a just war],” he did not refrain from writing off the morality of a just
war as relative. In the same article, Niebuhr concluded:
Each must decide whether, on balance, there is enough preponderance of moral
value on one side of a conflict to justify conscientious participation. While the
judgments of the Christian community can help, in the final analysis the
individual conscience is the arbiter of the concept of a just war.59
In Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, then, sacrificial love without justice was a misunderstanding of
the commandment of love. A just war, however, was not completely out of the question.
58
59
Ibid., 78.
Ibid.
111
Niebuhr’s Christian Realism called for, above all else, a middle ground between hysteria
and complacency. Niebuhr strongly urged approaching the Cold War upon a middle path that
avoided either an eagerness to launch a nuclear missile or a passive approach toward relations
with the Soviet Union. In a televised interview, journalist and television news anchor Mike
Wallace (1918-2012) asked Niebuhr if, given the choice, it would be better to live under
communism rather than have a nuclear war. Niebuhr responded, “We have to risk a nuclear war
in order to escape capitulation to communism.”60 Niebuhr had stated his preference to war as
opposed to living under communist rule four years previously in a Christianity and Crisis
editorial: “It is not possible for an individual to choose a certain and present evil in preference to
what is imagined to be a worse future one.” Niebuhr continued, “We cannot escape the dilemma
which we confront by the fact that the threat of atomic power may be a deterrent of war; but this
threat also involves the risk of an atomic war and the consequent destruction.”61 For Niebuhr,
national defense under the rubric of justice certainly took precedent over passivity and
complacency shrouded under the guise of peace.
Niebuhr and American Views of Russia
One of the most stunning omissions from all of Niebuhr’s critique and commentary from
the 1950s is any discussion of the Russian people outside of the political leadership. This
characterization of Russians as one solid monolithic group of godless and atheistic communists
was standard rhetoric for the era. However, Niebuhr’s own journal, Christianity and Crisis,
included occasional references to Russian churches despite Niebuhr’s silence on the matter. For
60
Michael Wallace, “The Mike Wallace Interview: Reinhold Niebuhr,” April 27, 1958.
University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom Center.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/niebuhr_reinhold.html (accessed
September 1, 2014).
61
Niebuhr, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no. 6 (April 19, 1954): 42-43.
112
example, a 1954 edition of Christianity and Crisis contained an article that basically outlined
101 Orthodox Russian Churches and religious communities within the Soviet Union, ultimately
concluding that the number of leadership vocations within the church was increasing.62 Niebuhr
does not invoke language that goes as far as describing all Russians as evil, yet he made no
attempt to differentiate between a communist enemy and the common Russian citizenry.
The closest that Niebuhr came to discussing the Russian people in general was in a
discussion of the significance of a National Council delegation visit to the Russian Church.
Niebuhr ultimately determined that the value of the visit was, “to give the Christians of Russia
some contact with Christians in democratic lands and impress upon them both the freedom with
which they deal with in international issues and to contribute a little to the emancipation of the
Russian mind from the preconceptions in which all citizens of totalitarian states are
imprisoned.”63 Beyond finding a glimmer of hope in building diplomatic bridges between
America and Russia through Christian fellowship, Niebuhr was, by and large, mute on any
differentiation between the Soviet political leadership and the Russian people. His silence on
discussing the place of the Russian commoners or the Russian churches was typical of anticommunist sentiment in America at the time. Yet, while Niebuhr’s anti-communism was
standard fare for the time, his criticism of America’s attitude toward the Soviet Union was a
complete departure from mainstream American thought.
Niebuhr varied and occasionally conflicted with popular American opinion when it came
to the intricacies and particularities of communism and what to do about it. He revealed flashes
62
“Tells of Existing Religious Communities in Russia,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no.
8 (May 17, 1954): 64.
63
Niebuhr, “The National Council Delegation to the Russian Church,” Christianity and
Crisis XVI, no 7 (April 30, 1956): 49-50.
113
of patriotism throughout his life and mostly supported the Eisenhower Administration at any
given time during the 1950s.64 Simultaneously, he chastised Americans for worsening the
conflict by having no grasp of the meaning of their faith, engaging in complacency with regard
to Russia, or by resorting to unnecessary hysteria. In 1954, Niebuhr observed, “It would be nice
if Christian humility could reinforce common sense and we could express a faith which can set
limits to the pride of a great nation.” Niebuhr stated, “Undoubtedly our lack of wisdom in the
complexities of international politics is due not so much to ignorance as to the vainglorious
imaginations of a nation which bestrides this narrow world like a huge colossus!”65 A few
months later, Niebuhr opined:
The “Unknown God” in America seems to be faith itself. Our politicians are
always admonishing the people to have “faith.” Sometimes they seem to imply
that faith is itself redemptive. Sometimes this faith implies faith in something.
That something is usually an idol, rather than the “God and father of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” who both judges and has mercy upon sinful men and nations.
Sometimes we are asked to have faith in ourselves, sometimes to have faith in
humanity, sometimes to have faith in America. Sometimes it is hope, rather than
faith, which is really intended. We are to have hope that we will win the cold war
or that the cold war will not break out into an atomic conflict. Much of it is a
perversion of the Christian Gospel.66
He was as well known for his Christian Realism approaches to foreign affairs as he was for his
harsh critiques of those segments of American society who erred on the side of either being too
64
Despite disagreements over specific policies, Niebuhr was overwhelmingly proEisenhower and pro-Dulles. For example, see: Niebuhr, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and
Crisis XIII, no. 24 (January 25, 1954): 186; “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no
.13 (July 26, 1954): 99; “American Leadership in the Cold War,” Christianity and Crisis XIV,
no. 17 (October 18, 1954): 129-130; “The President’s Triumphal Journey,” Christianity and
Crisis XIX, no. 23 (January 11, 1960): 202-203.
65
Niebuhr, “American Leadership in the Cold War,” 129.
66
Niebuhr, “Religiosity and the Christian Faith,” Christianity and Crisis XIV, no. 24
(January 24, 1955): 184-185.
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passive or too aggressive. Historian William Inboden considered Niebuhr to be “so
institutionally ambivalent that he served sometimes as a chief architect of the churchmen’s
statements and other times as an outside critic.”67 Any apparent ambivalence or ambiguity can be
explained in Niebuhr’s understanding of Christian Realism and Neo-Orthodoxy.
His impatience for complacency or any soft approaches to dealing with real or perceived
Soviet threats was notable. He was equally intolerant of hysteria and denounced the use of
nuclear weapons. Anything that resembled more of a middle ground approach to foreign
policy—suggestions that fell between overreaction and complacency—was aligned more with
Niebuhr’s Christian Realism and was generally applauded by Niebuhr. He urged Americans to
shed their clichés of Soviet aspirations for world domination and recommended approaching the
Soviet Union with an attitude of relaxing tensions.
Niebuhr, in most instances, moved from a perspective of the Soviet Union that bordered
on calling for preemptive strikes to one of a guarded coexistence over the span of Eisenhower’s
presidency. His Christian Realism was central to this shift and accounted for his application of,
what he considered to be, appropriate ethical, moral, and political foreign policy strategies. It
was Niebuhr’s emphasis on love and justice that served as the basis of his perspective of the
Soviet Union. The priority of love and justice to his own theological and political beliefs also
propelled him to the position of stature that he enjoyed over the course of his life and to the
prominent place in America’s religious history that he wields today.
Niebuhr within the American Religious Panorama in the 1950s
67
Inboden, 61.
115
When examining Niebuhr’s life during the course of the Eisenhower Administration, it is
important to keep several points in mind. To appreciate the work ethic, sense of obligation, and
output of Niebuhr, one must remember key facts related to Niebuhr’s character, health, and sense
of community. First, Niebuhr’s character was that of an honest, intelligent, and extremely selfaware theologian. A pastor and academic in his own right, Niebuhr took pride in the
accumulation of knowledge and work that he had attained by the 1950s. He was involved in
politics. Since his days as a pastor in Detroit in the 1910s, Niebuhr had closely followed politics.
He frequently put extraordinary effort toward shaping the outcome of political races, political
climates, and the political direction of his country, region, and locality. Niebuhr knew his politics
down to the local level. As an influential religious leader, he was often listened to when he made
public statements pertaining to current political affairs. He involved himself in local politics in
Detroit, wrote political pieces to the editor of the New York Times, and even stood as the
Socialist candidate for a New York State Senator office in 1930.68
During Eisenhower’s two terms in office, Niebuhr was in his sixties. Niebuhr’s health is
an important consideration to keep in mind when assessing his actions in this period. As a man
who battled frequent bouts of depression and ill health over the course of his life, Niebuhr’s first
stroke in 1952 severely limited his furious pace of publication, speaking, and traveling. It also
worsened his depression. Perhaps one of the greatest factors in Niebuhr’s flippant remarks
concerning a host of events and people was the physical pain that Niebuhr grappled with every
day. Niebuhr’s insecurities and diminished sense of worth were magnified as the 1950s
progressed. One area of Niebuhr’s life that this was most apparent was in his relationship with
68
Letter from Niebuhr to the editor of the New York Times, October 30, 1953
“Correspondence” Box 9, “New York Times-New Zealand Student Christian Movement” Folder,
Niebuhr Papers, LOC. Niebuhr’s Senate bid garnered him 1,480 votes to Democrat Duncan
O’Brien’s 20,271 and Republican Wilbur Murphy’s 10,947. See Fox, 124.
116
Billy Graham. One illuminating example of Niebuhr’s view of Graham can be found in an article
that Niebuhr proposed to the Christian Century in 1956:
There is more hope that Graham himself will see the weaknesses of a traditional
evangelical perfectionism in an atomic era than that his clerical and lay sponsors,
with their enthusiasm for any kind of revival will see it. For Graham is a world
traveller and a very perceptive observer of the world scene with its many
collective problems. His instincts are genuine and his sense of justice well
developed. He could embody the cause of justice, particularly where it is so
closely and obviously related to the love commandment as on the race issue, into
his revival message. The only thing that could prevent such a development is that
it is contrary to the well established “technique” of revivalism.69
Niebuhr commented on Graham and his ministry often throughout the 1950s. Niebuhr found
Graham wrong in believing that America could, “solve the problem of the atomic bomb by
converting individuals.”70 Niebuhr found Graham’s prescriptions for prayer as a primary means
of combating communism insufficient. While Niebuhr believed that Billy Graham was an
“earnest Christian” who held the “largest audience of any evangelist in all history,” Niebuhr
repeatedly claimed that Graham had not yet “grasped and preached a whole gospel.”71 Niebuhr’s
perspective of Graham’s theology, though, did not mean an abnegation of Graham’s worth.
Niebuhr felt that Graham was doing much for evangelism around the world. He simply found
Graham’s use of his ministry less impactful than it might have been had Graham or his associates
69
Niebuhr, “A Proposal for Billy Graham,” article proposal to the Christian Century,
June 20, 1956, “Speech, Article, & Book File” Box, “A Proposal for Billy Graham” Folder,
Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
70
Letter from Niebuhr to Reverend Johannes Ringstad of the Immanuel Lutheran Church
in Escanaba, Michigan, April 26, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 10, “Rh-Ri” Folder, Niebuhr
Papers, LOC.
71
Correspondence between Niebuhr and Sherwood Eddy, written on Niebhr’s draft of an
article, “Let us pray for Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale,” nd, “Correspondence” Box 5,
“Eddy, Sherwood” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
117
commanded a deeper and more thorough—or Niebuhresque—understanding of the Bible. This
view may be attributed to Niebuhr’s sincere assessment of Graham’s theology, Niebuhr’s
jealousy of a younger, handsome, widely-known religious figure that had surpassed Niebuhr in
popularity and attention in the 1950s, or a combination of the two.
Lastly, Niebuhr’s sense of community in the 1950s is important to understanding his
place in society. He actively maintained an impressive amount of correspondence with numerous
individuals, organizations, and societies. As a seasoned scholar, Niebuhr’s time and attention
was sought after from students, colleagues, consultants, corporations, and government bodies.
Niebuhr attempted to continue the several relationships that he had established over the course of
a lifetime. Many of Niebuhr’s closest friends were notable figures in positions of prominence.
Hans J. Morgenthau considered Niebuhr a close friend. He regularly sought Niebuhr’s insight on
a number of projects and attended several academic functions with him.72 Emil Brunner, a noted
Swiss theologian and the co-founder of the Neo-Orthodox school of theological thought, was
also a good friend of Niebuhr’s. Niebuhr admitted that he always felt close to Brunner, they were
good friends, and Brunner’s Man in Revolt influenced him greatly early on in Niebuhr’s life.73
The Washington, D.C., National Presbyterian Church pastor Edward Elson considered Niebuhr a
“great theologian.”74 Indeed, an exhaustive list of Niebuhr’s close friends—not to mention his
acquaintances and the groups he either led or participated in—is too long to mention here.75
72
Letter and enclosure, Hans J. Morgenthau to Niebuhr, January 21, 1955,
“Correspondence” Box 8, “Morgenthau, Hans J.” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
73
Letter from Niebuhr to Dietz Lange, March 26, 1961, “Correspondence” Box 8, “La”
Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
74
Letter from Elson to Niebuhr, September 30, 1955, “Correspondence” Box 5, “Elson,
Edward L.R.” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
75
Two excellent starting places for identifying Niebuhr’s closest friends, coworkers,
organizations, and groups are the Library of Congress’ Niebuhr holdings or Richard Fox’s
biography of Niebuhr.
118
Suffice it to say that Niebuhr was thoroughly embedded in America’s religious makeup. His
sense of community provided the backdrop to his social, professional, and personal life.
Keeping the Niebuhr of the 1950s in mind, one finds an advanced scholar, respected man,
and wise analyst of current affairs. Niebuhr was also deteriorating in health and scaling back his
normal involvement with professional affairs. Despite his march into his golden years taking a
toll on his body and mind, Niebuhr was still immensely influential and important to American
religion, academics, and foreign affairs.
Conclusion
Niebuhr’s presence loomed large in American life throughout the 1950s. He had attained
the position of a revered and well-respected public intellectual. Niebuhr’s perspectives on
foreign policy, theology, Protestant Christianity, and America’s role in the world reached large
audiences. Through television interviews, newspaper articles, radio, popular magazines, and
scholarly publications, Niebuhr’s opinions on several contemporary issues could be found.
Indeed, Niebuhr represents one of America’s last great theologians.76 He was immersed in the
most important national dialogues of his time and acutely aware of the political, religious, and
international currents of his day.
Niebuhr was also very different during the years of Eisenhower’s terms than he was
several decades earlier. He had scaled back his vocal support of more socialist approaches to
politics. He presided over the then-expanding Neo-Orthodoxy vein of theology. Due in part to
Niebuhr’s efforts, Neo-Orthodoxy challenged theologically liberal Protestant Christianity as a
76
This assessment of Niebuhr having represented one of the United States’ last great
theologians is my own. I base this conclusion upon comparable American, self-proclaimed
theologians.
119
force to be reckoned with. Because of much of Niebuhr’s academic work in the 1930s,
fundamentalist and conservative approaches to theology lost ground to liberal theology, and
later, Neo-Orthodox theology. Niebuhr’s split with theological liberalism created ripples in
American theological circles that would eventually reshape the landscape of American religious
life. The three major forms of Protestant Christianity in the 1950s: Evangelical, Neo-Orthodoxy,
and theologically liberal, would not have been so were it not for the influence and impact of
Niebuhr’s life.
Niebuhr’s views of the world were, at once, similar to his fellow Americans, and on the
other hand, very much at odds with most of his countrymen and women. Niebuhr was very
happy and humbled to be an American. He was also very ashamed of many of his nation’s
actions on the world stage. He concluded that America was a bully in much of its foreign
policies. He found America to have overexerted its influence in a number of instances overseas.
At the same time, he joined many in calling for a more robust, firm, and stronger stance against
the global spread of communism. Niebuhr was particular in his anti-communism, though. He
chastised the tactics of Senator McCarthy and the HUAC. Yet, he commended other
Congressional efforts toward monitoring and managing communism in America. He surveyed
the political developments in Soviet Russia, several nations in Europe, portions of East Asia, and
regions of Africa with an astuteness to which many in the upper echelons of American
policymaking circles gave great attention.
With foreign policy, Niebuhr praised some of Eisenhower’s and Dulles’ strategies and
spoke against others. He did not favor portions of certain New Look tactics, yet, he also
appreciated much of the Eisenhower Administration’s more level-headed and cautious
approaches in the early years of Eisenhower’s first term. In general, Niebuhr found American
120
foreign policy troublesome when it was veiled in religious rhetoric and given divine sanction by
American leadership. In this, Niebuhr identified the growth of civil religion as a disturbing
phenomenon for the effects that it had on both religion and foreign affairs. In closing, Niebuhr’s
greatest contribution to American life in the 1950s was his ability to truthfully acknowledge the
course that America was on with regard to larger domestic issues and looming international
issues. He took Billy Graham to task in the 1950s for Graham’s reluctance to address the race
issue. He wrote about America’s faith in faith itself, or the half-heartedness of nominal
Christians. He identified America’s hypocrisy in the difference between foundational ideals and
actual practice. During the anxiety of the 1950s, Niebuhr was especially relevant because of his
ability to identify and articulate the sources of national anxiety for the larger American public.
Niebuhr, the champion of Neo-Orthodox Christians in America, was not the sole voice in
the larger public’s discussion of religion and politics. Other religious leaders clamored to insert
their own stances on the communist threat in the 1950s. Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam
offered a theologically liberal take on the best way to engage anti-democratic threats across the
globe. It is to Oxnam that the next chapter turns.
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CHAPTER 6
G. BROMLEY OXNAM, LIBERAL PROTESTANT
CHRISTIANITY, AND THE NATIONAL RELIGION
On Saturday, March 4, 1950, Methodist Bishop of the New York Area, G. Bromley
Oxnam delivered a speech to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (Y.M.H.A.) in Aurora,
Illinois. Oxnam’s speech, “Whither America—The Nature of Our Present Crisis” resembled a
series of speeches he gave across the country in 1950. The heart of Oxnam’s message was
something that he referred to as America’s great “if moment” of history. Oxnam perceived his
country as standing at one of its great “turning points,” faced with the decision of what to do in
the face of its communist rival’s ever-expanding reach. Oxnam declared, “The only way you can
deal with an ideology with which you disagree is to present a better one.” Oxnam expounded on
this point a month earlier at the Ohio Pastors’ Convention, slamming the arms race between the
U.S. and Soviet Russia the day that the U.S. government decided to develop the hydrogen bomb,
and suggested that the church must take the lead in the battle of ideologies.1
Oxnam’s thought on early Cold War tensions provides an interesting perspective on
religion and American foreign policy in the 1950s. Oxnam was, in many ways, the prototypical
theological liberal of his time. His biographer, historian Robert Moats Miller described him as,
“certainly the most powerful (and imaginative) bishop in The Methodist Church, then the largest
1
Kenneth Baker, “Use Double Auto Shift in Pastor Talks: 2 Religious Leaders Use
‘Platoon System’.” Columbus Dispatch Thursday, February 2, 1950; G. Bromley Oxnam Diary
Entry, Wednesday, February 1, 1950, Box 19, “World Crisis Discussed by Oxnam.” Aurora, ILL
Beacon News Monday, March 6, 1950, Box 19, Garfield Bromley Oxnam Papers, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter Oxnam Collection, LOC).
122
and most muscular Protestant church in the United States.”2 One can see in his public statements
and in his own personal diary (one that he kept daily for decades) several calls for coexistence
and peace when referring to the nuclear stalemate. Yet, like many who get close to the highest
circles of power, Oxnam supported more aggressive American foreign policy at times. This
chapter traces the personal and professional life of Oxnam and examines his stance on American
foreign policy. Granted, no major religious leader in the 1950s marched in step on all social,
political, and religious issues, yet utilizing Oxnam as a representative figure contributes to a
better understanding of theologically liberal Protestants and their thought on the cold war during
the 1950s. These theologically liberal churches collectively voiced concern or support in a
variety of ways throughout the 1950s. In many interdenominational and ecumenical statements
that spoke to many of the political issues of the day, Oxnam’s name was either present, or very
much involved in their very crafting.
This chapter provides an overview of Oxnam, his role in the nation’s perspectives of
foreign policy, and his place within the greater national religious body. While names such as
William Randolph Hearst and Billy Graham are synonymous with American religion in the
1950s, the theologically liberal strand that Oxnam operated within has received little attention
and largely escaped public memory. Indeed, the 1950s were a time of anxiety for many. For a
majority of America’s largest Protestant churches, this was much more the case. On paper,
membership rolls swelled, Americans who were establishing families, homes, and lives around
the country exhibited a greater religious sincerity than ever before, and church monies funded
expanding denominational missions, personnel, and buildings. At the heart of many theologically
2
Robert Miller, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism (Nashville,
TN: Abingdon Press, 1990), 9.
123
liberal churches, however, a decline had begun to set in that would reveal itself a major crisis in
the 1960s and 1970s.
At mid-century, many theologically liberal churches had outgrown those qualities that
gave rise to the power they wielded. In a sense, they had expanded and grown to the point where
they were too respectable to preach an honest Gospel. The focus of many of these churches—
social issues, race, and urban plight—left many of their congregations uneasy. The enormity of
the ecumenical efforts that many churches supported also disheartened some churchgoers who
desired a more local church focus. One of the arenas that theologically liberal church bodies
moved further into was national politics. By rallying behind the goals that Presidential
Administrations cloaked in religious tones, many churches acted as a means of public support for
government goals. A description of Oxnam’s actions throughout the 1950s illuminates some of
these aforementioned points. This study of Oxnam details a change in Oxnam’s thinking—from
a more liberal, peaceful, anti-war approach to foreign policy that dealt with the Soviet Union in
the 1940s, to an ambiguous position that changed off and on through the 1950s. This ambiguity
ranged from calls for open discussion with the Soviets to full support for the existing, more
aggressive policies of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration. This observation is helpful in
better understanding Oxnam’s, among other theologically liberal Christians’, perspectives of
America’s foreign policy regarding the Soviet Union. To better grasp where Oxnam operated
from politically and theologically, one must understand, at the least, a brief, personal
background.
Oxnam’s many adventures between his formative years and his election to the presidency
of DePauw University will not be meticulously detailed here as most of this overview is
contained in Chapter Three. After turning down his acceptance to Harvard’s History PhD
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program, Oxnam returned to California. Having been received on trial by the Southern California
Annual Conference in absentia before he left for seminary studies at Boston University, Oxnam
decided to return to Los Angeles and take up his ministerial appointment. After a brief,
successful appointment in Poplar, California, Oxnam accepted a position at the nearly moribund
Church of All Nations in a downtrodden area of East L.A. From his position there, Oxnam
established his base of operations. While pastor at the Church of All Nations, Oxnam left three
times to travel with evangelist, socialist, YMCA leader, author, and itinerant missionary
Sherwood Eddie (1871-1963). He essentially served as Eddie’s secretary doing evangelical
missionary work and meeting with heads of state and foreign dignitaries in Nanking, Canton,
Hong Kong, Singapore, England, Germany, and Russia.
After ten years of service at the Church of All Nations, Oxnam had drastically improved
the church’s future prospects. He inherited the pastorate with 111 souls in the congregation in
1917. By 1927, Oxnam had overseen the substantial growth of the congregation, solid financial
support insured, and a skilled staff and fresh leadership brought in. Several new buildings were
built and dedicated. He accepted a faculty position as a professor of practical theology and city
church at the Boston University School of Theology where he taught for the 1927-1928
academic year. In 1928, Oxnam moved from his professorship at Boston to the presidency of
DePauw University.
Oxnam advanced through a variety of positions following his move from Boston
University to DePauw. He served as the DePauw University president for eight years, from 1928
to 1936, before being named the Bishop of the Omaha area. Oxnam held this post from 1936
until 1939 before happily returning to Boston as Bishop of the Boston area between 1939 and
1944. Oxnam then moved to take up the post of Bishop of the New York area from 1944 to 1952
125
before making his final move to Washington to become the Bishop of the Washington area
between 1952 and 1960. It is during his decades as a bishop in the church and as a leader of the
Federal, National, and World Councils of Churches that Oxnam publicly interacted with
American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and with the vitriolic hatred that most
American’s wielded against communism.
Oxnam’s Political and Theological Character
Several of Oxnam’s characteristics stand out during the Eisenhower Administration.
First, Oxnam was a tireless Methodist bishop. He kept a demanding schedule that included his
primary duties as bishop of the Washington area of Methodist Churches and Secretary of the
Council of Bishops, his presidential duties as the head of the World Council of Churches, his
speaking engagements around the world, and his output of publications. Throughout any given
year in the 1950s, one could find Oxnam delivering a sermon by invitation, breaking ground on a
new Methodist facility, or conferring with religious and government leaders outside of the time
that he dedicated to official business. He and his wife, Ruth, travelled much. Second, Oxnam was
outspoken on his perspectives of foreign policy. Both privately and publicly, Oxnam was
consumed with the course of future action regarding the Cold War. Third, his well-developed
responses to questions concerning matters of foreign policy typically offered little direction,
aside from transferring the Soviet-American standoff to the United Nations. Like many of the
then-called churchmen—religious figures in nationally recognized positions of prominence—
Oxnam also enjoyed the affiliation with power. Keeping these major attributes in mind, it is
apparent that Oxnam utilized his position within The Methodist Church and World Council of
Churches to maintain relationships with government figures, further the goals of theologically
liberal Protestant churches, and urge America’s foreign policy to move closer to the authority
126
and control of the United Nations. Ultimately, Oxnam’s work contributed to the rise of civil
religion in the United States, the widespread support of Eisenhower and Dulles’ foreign policy
directed toward the Soviet Union, and the later atrophy of many theologically liberal Protestant
churches.
Oxnam was outspoken in his core religious beliefs, yet continuously emphasized his faith
in humankind, technology, and science. He held strong convictions regarding God, Jesus, and the
Bible. He did not doubt the divinity of Jesus, the personal relationship with God that each
individual had access to, or the complete forgiveness of sins that Jesus attained for all people
from his work on the cross. In his revealing and genuine account of his beliefs, A Testament of
Faith, Oxnam declared, “God [is] revealed in Jesus Christ.”3 He continued, “For me, religion is
commitment to Christ Himself, since the Christian faith has always held that God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, that, as Jesus said, ‘I and my Father are one.’ It is really
becoming a new man in Christ Jesus.”4 With chapter headings such as “I Believe in God, I
Believe in Jesus Christ, I Believe in Life Everlasting, I Believe in the Church, I Believe in the
Forgiveness of Sins,” and “I Believe in Man,” Oxnam reveals himself to be an evangelical,
liberal Methodist who found the body of believers to be valuable in changing society.
Oxnam found great value in the work of men. His emphasis on social uplift and the
improvement of the neediest segments of society reflected the traits of Social Gospel-era
Christianity. He rejected, however, being associated with the Social Gospel, as he believed that
there was only one Gospel and its thrust was not merely social. His involvement in ecumenical
3
G. Bromley Oxnam, A Testament of Faith (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company,
1958), 12.
4
Ibid., 23.
127
organizations and his community outreach suggest his inclination toward improving those
around him who were less fortunate than most. While Oxnam expressed his dissatisfaction with
prayer that became mechanical and his unease with creeds, he certainly focused on the point of
“God is love.”5 Oxnam was never a theologian and frequently avoided outlining any theology of
his own. However, his breakdown of the Apostles’ Creed in A Testament of Faith shows that he
had a stronger grasp of theology than he let on.
Oxnam preferred to live out his faith. Though the majority of his life was spent in
administrative roles, he sought to effect greater change in his immediate proximity by focusing
on bringing the message of salvation to, and uplifting the lives of, the most unfortunate around
him. His ten years at the Church of All Nations serves as an example. He was offered five
different (and more comfortable) assignments before finally leaving the church for his teaching
position with the BU School of Theology in 1928. Oxnam claimed that he did not feel as if his
work was finished in the largely immigrant section of Los Angeles that his church served. When
Oxnam took his post as the Bishop of the Washington area, he set out immediately to connect
with those Methodist churches that he oversaw. In the first three months of his tenure at
Washington—in September, October, and November of 1952—Oxnam and his wife Ruth visited
all 1691 churches in the area. With district superintendents frequently serving as navigators,
Oxnam and Ruth averaged between twenty and twenty-five churches per day.6
As previously mentioned, Oxnam’s beliefs reflected those of most theologically liberal
churches of the time. Oxnam lived through the height of theological liberalism in America
(1900-1960) and worked the majority of his academic and religious career during the point at
5
Ibid., ix.
Robert Moats Miller, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism
(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990), 312.
6
128
which theological liberalism dominated American culture (1930-1960). Theological liberalism
applied the features of late nineteenth-century German rationalism—ideas of the Enlightenment,
or reason coupled with theories of evolution—to the study of science and religion in attempt to
reconcile theology with biblical criticism and science. Oxnam’s liberal worldview was on full
display in a 1948 publication. In this article, which largely seeks to reconcile Christianity and the
Bible with science, Oxnam declared, “Science and religion are essential to man’s salvation.”7
Theological liberalism was an intellectual movement and Oxnam was firmly in its camp.
Association With Power
Oxnam’s major access to the highest levels of American power came from his close,
personal relationship with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1888-1959). Though Oxnam
had some association with New York Governor and presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, and
Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F.
Kennedy, and held correspondence with Standard Oil Company head, John D. Rockefeller
(1839-1937) and YMCA leader John Mott (1865-1955) into the 1950s, Dulles was Oxnam’s
closest friend in the highest circles of power. Indeed, it is because of Dulles that many of
Oxnam’s perspectives concerning American foreign policy garnered as much of a hearing as
they did. Because of this relationship and the doors it opened, Oxnam was looked to by large
numbers of Methodists and Protestant churchgoers as one who could legitimately speak to the
crisis of the early Cold War with some authority along with advice grounded in Christian
principles.
7
G. Bromley Oxnam, “Religion and Science in Accord.” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 256 (March, 1948): 147.
129
Dulles and Oxnam had met before their time spent together in the 1940s on the Federal
Council of Churches’ National Study Conference on the Churches and World Order and also on
the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace. Dulles, a Presbyterian, and Oxnam, a Methodist,
both hailed from theologically liberal backgrounds, participated in (and helped to form) national
and international ecumenical organizations, and attempted to further America’s democratic reach
through bodies of Christian networks and interdenominational organizations. Both men called for
a foreign policy to be guided by moral objectives. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s,
these moral objectives became ambiguous in the name of national security. On August 9, 1945,
Oxnam (then president of the FCC) and Dulles jointly issued a statement that conveyed both
men’s pride at the “scientific miracle” of atomic energy, yet also their concern over its potential
misuse. They called for self-restraint until the Japanese government had more time to respond to
the American ultimatum, but, as historian William Inboden has pointed out, “Notably, the
statement raised no qualms about the bombings as a direct assault on Japanese civilians—even
though forbidden by the cardinal tenets of the Christian just war position.”8 This instance is not
the only event that raises questions over Oxnam’s place at the intersection of religion and politics
in mid-twentieth-century American foreign affairs.
Oxnam spelled out his general support for the potential use of atomic weapons again in
1950. The FCC was re-born in 1950 as the National Council of Churches (NCC). The new
organization declared its willingness to shape its own policies in light of the goals of the United
Nations. The statements of the NCC leadership during its opening years reflected a growing
consensus with respect to foreign policy among church leaders—to include leading theologically
liberal figures. In response to Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s address to the NCC conference
8
William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of
Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 32.
130
on the Korean conflict, a panel of NCC leaders—including Oxnam, Dr. Edward Pruden,
president of the American Baptist Convention and sometime pastor to President Truman, and the
new NCC president, Episcopal Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, all stated their willingness to
support the use of atomic weapons if future circumstances demanded so.9 In an act that
accentuates the ambiguity of Oxnam’s position on foreign policy, the same year, Oxnam agreed
with United Lutheran Church in America president, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, that talks eventually
should be held with Russians regarding “hydrogen and atom bomb control.”10
Oxnam’s relationship with Dulles only grew closer through the 1950s, throughout Dulles’
tenure as Secretary of State, and into the days preceding his death. Oxnam was invited to both of
the presidential inaugurations as a guest of Dulles. Dulles also summoned Oxnam to Dulles’
official Secretary of State offices, the White House, or more informal settings at several points
throughout the 1950s. In some cases, Oxnam’s perspective was sought. In others, it was readily
offered without prompting. In 1950, for example, Oxnam and his wife Ruth were invited to the
Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York as guests of Dulles to hear a presentation that Dulles had
drafted in response to a recent Herbert Hoover speech. Once at the Waldorf, Dulles admitted to
Oxnam that he was “sticking his neck out on this, and it might cost him his political future.”
Oxnam assured Dulles that he did not think that was the case and “if we allowed this drift to
isolationism to engulf us,” that Dulles’ speech attacked, Oxnam warned, “we would be
9
Ibid., 55. In 1953, Oxnam stated that there was “no alternative to the Korean War” and
asserted that “we must be as strong as it is necessary to convince Russia that she can’t win.” See,
Oxnam diary clipping, “Bishop Oxnam Urges Aid to Meet Threat of Reds.” Box 22, Oxnam
Collection, LOC.
10
“Asks U.S. Vow Not to Use H-Bomb.” Wichita Negro Star March 3, 1950, 1.
131
postponing the evil day and—many of us think—insuring our defeat.”11 Dulles and his wife,
Janet, invited Oxnam to several functions.
Oxnam and his wife Ruth took telephone calls and letters from the Dulles’ at several
points throughout the 1950s, including a warm Christmas card each year, from the Dulles’ to the
Oxnams.12 In a conversation with Mrs. Dulles in 1954, Oxnam learned that “Foster,” as those
closest to the Secretary called him, thought very highly of Oxnam. Mrs. Dulles also let Oxnam
know that she and her husband wished for their son Avery to meet with Oxnam. In the same
conversation, Oxnam shared his opinion of John Foster’s brother, Allen, who Oxnam felt was a
“very interesting person,” who, “despite how he comes off, is not rude at all.”13 This relationship
only grew over time. Aside from official meetings, Oxnam acted as sometimes-pastoral guide
and friend to Dulles as Eisenhower’s second term continued on. Oxnam and Dulles’ interactions
presented a mixture of friendly bantering and informal discussions of policy and Washington. In
1957, Dulles telephoned Oxnam at home following Oxnam’s gall-bladder surgery. Dulles called
to extend his warm-wishes as someone who had already experienced the surgery.
Like many of Dulles’ conversations, however, small talk often changed to discussions of
his work. Shortly into the same phone call, Dulles turned to administrative economic woes:
“These men are perfectly willing to authorize all the money necessary for military facing of a
problem but hesitate when it comes to the economic aid, which after all is more fundamental
when you come to deal with the real situation we face.” Dulles continued, “A few million dollars
wisely spent in economic aid may be worth many, many millions that involve the use of power.”
Dulles then explained that he thought “the churches” ought to be more helpful than they have
11
Oxnam diary entry. Box 19, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Oxnam diary clipping, Box 22, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
13
Oxnam diary entry. June 15, 1954, Box 23, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
12
132
been before Oxnam outlined his frustration over the difficulty the State Department presented
when the Methodist Church leadership brought “very significant movements” that fall outside of
the scope of State Department “concrete situations.” After empathizing with Oxnam, Dulles
explained that he thought that there could be a closer relationship between the churches and the
government. He then let Oxnam know that he missed him and wished for him to “stop by some
time.”14
Oxnam took Dulles up on his invitation and met with him in May. The exchange that
took place describes the cordial relationship the two maintained. It also reveals both men’s
perspectives on policy as well as their honesty with one another on foreign policy strategies.
When Oxnam met Dulles at his State Department office, Dulles welcomed him, “I wanted you to
come just so that we might have a long talk. I covet the pastoral relationship of minister and
layman.” Dulles continued:
I should not say it but [Covenant First Presbyterian Church senior pastor Edward
L.R.] Elson, while a very fine fellow and no doubt all right to fill a church and to
keep the administration going, is quite hopeless when it comes to pastoral
association. He has nothing to do with me. I simply attend the services and listen
to him preach. 15
Dulles then began to recount the problems that he faced, particularly, as Oxnam noted, the
problem of applying “the Christian principle in the concrete situation.” Dulles revealed that the
days he had spent in the Federal Council of Churches were perhaps the happiest of his life.
There, Dulles was able to concentrate thinking upon “the principles” and he felt that in that
14
15
Oxnam diary entry. Box 28, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Oxnam diary entry. May 13, 1957, Box 28, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
133
atmosphere, principles could be considered in “the light of religion.” Like other conversations
between Oxnam and Dulles, the topic soon turned to church-state relations. Dulles said:
How difficult it is and I really do not know the answer, but I have a feeling that
there ought to be a closer relationship between the Church and the leaders of
government who are charged with these responsibilities. Both the President and I
are Christian men. We are humble men, and we find ourselves quite alone. It has
been a long time since any churchman has come to see me. I treasure the letters
that come. In fact, I used to take them home over the weekends to read them.
They sustain one when the going is tough. 16
After assuring Dulles that many men avoided visiting him out of a mixture of respect and
affection, Oxnam admitted, “I myself have deliberately refrained from coming because I did not
want to add so much as a single caller to the burden of responsibility you carry.” Oxnam added,
“I know that each person takes from your strength and we did not wish to do that.” Dulles
responded, “It is the other way around. The presence of such friends add to strength,” before
Oxnam opened the door to a sensitive foreign policy matter. Oxnam replied, “I agree thoroughly.
There can be honest difference of opinion. For instance, some of us have differed with what is
thought to be your attitude in India.” After being prompted for explanation, Oxnam offered, “The
arming of Pakistan and the general attitude toward [India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal]
Nehru (1889-1964) that seems to indicate a certain clash of personality.” 17
Oxnam briefed Dulles on other Methodist bishops’ disturbance over news of President
Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles’ views on arming Pakistan and reluctance over supporting
Nehru in certain facets of international diplomacy. Oxnam also conveyed a conversation that he
16
17
Ibid.
Ibid.
134
had with Nehru about Nehru’s attempt to drive a wedge between Soviet communism and
Chinese Nationalism. Oxnam claimed that Nehru felt that American policies were driving Soviet
communism and Chinese nationalism together. Of course, both the United States and the Soviet
Union were both competing to make India an ally throughout the 1950s. Secretary Dulles would
have been well aware of Nehru’s criticism of the 1956 Suez Canal invasion by British, Israeli,
and French forces. He also would have been aware of Nehru’s sensitivity to American distrust of
Nehruvian socialism, despite the generally favorable relationship that Eisenhower and Nehru
maintained.
To this conversation, Dulles responded, “[Nehru’s plan to drive a wedge] is a very
interesting and arguable position to take, but the difficulty lies in the fact that Mr. Nehru does not
consider the time factor.” Dulles wondered out loud, “What do we do while he is driving the
wedge, and how long is it going to take for the wedge to be driven?” Dulles explained the reality
of the situation to Oxnam, “There are strategic considerations that have to be faced. We have
fought three wars now to see that we do not have an unfriendly Western shore of Europe.” Dulles
shared that he did not dare to allow the Soviets to take Formosa or the Philippines. “We have to
hold,” Dulles warned, “How do you hold and at the same time drive the wedge that he is talking
about?” With the informal and unfiltered consideration of official policy that Dulles
demonstrated during his time with the FCC’s Just and Durable Peace Commission, Dulles
speculated, “If we do not hold and he drives a wedge, or fails to drive it, and the Soviets take all
these territories, then we face a conflict in the Pacific, if it should come, with a much weakened
position.”18
18
Ibid.
135
It is conversations like these that show the closeness that Dulles and Oxnam shared. They
were comfortable with and trusting of one another. Because of years of friendship and
discussions, Oxnam enjoyed the association with power that his relationship with Dulles
provided. It also allowed him the opportunity to share news of his overseas and interchurch
interactions with Dulles, while at the same time gain the perspective and insight of America’s top
foreign policy strategist on international relations.19
Oxnam on American Foreign Policy
Publicly, Oxnam frequently claimed something akin to the quote that opened this chapter
when outlining the Cold War rivalry. Whether speaking as a representative of the World Council
of Churches, The Methodist Church, American Protestants, or merely himself, Oxnam made it a
point to frame the Cold War as a battle of ideologies. He also urged peaceful navigation through
the stalemate. However, Oxnam detracted from some Protestant leaders in his support of
maintaining a strong military presence and his push for a path that led to United Nations’ control
over many of the matters that stood at the heart of the Soviet-American conflict. Aside from
suggesting the handover of Cold War foreign policy from the United States to the United
Nations, maintaining America’s arsenal of atomic weapons, and maintaining military might,
Oxnam had very little in the way of proposed alterations to the progression of the Cold War. For
example, as early as March of 1950, Oxnam felt the need to clarify comments that he made to a
reporter earlier and wrote a reply to an editorial that published his stances on several issues.
19
Oxnam’s relationship to Dulles was widely known. For example, he was described as a
“long time friend of John Foster Dulles” in John Will, “Bishop Oxnam Urges Aid To Meet
Threat of Reds,” Mobile Press Register, 2, January, 1953, Box 22, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Also, Oxnam frequently played up this public relationship: “I know that Secretary Dulles
believes in Christian principles. He has no idea of leading us into war,” ibid.
136
Oxnam penned, “Realists quite apart from the morality involved know that in war all weapons
will be used. The restraining factor is not moral principle, but the fear of retaliation.”20
Indeed, his thinking on foreign policy was shaped by a number of factors. Yet, in the
1950s, Oxnam conferred with many individuals that were steeped in the world of American
foreign policy. He relied on contacts, acquaintances, and previous service from his time in the
1940s with the FCC. Throughout 1950, Oxnam met to discuss “the present situation” with John
Foster Dulles, Reinhold Niebuhr, International YMCA head Eugene E. Barnett (1888-1967),
Rockefeller Foundation president Chester I. Barnard, Stanley High of Readers’ Digest, Roswell
P. Barnes of the Federal Council of Churches, and Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, of the Commission of
Churches on International Affairs. Many of Oxnam’s perspectives came from a combination of
his own assessment and the opinions of other leading secular and religious figures.
Oxnam summarized his position on the Cold War during one of these meetings in
December of 1950. His diary entry that recounted a meeting with several concerned leaders
struck at the core of Oxnam’s stance on the conflict. Oxnam felt that in the five years after the
close of WWII, “the West” had become “reinvigorated.” He described Russia as having realized
this and having come to the point where they questioned whether or not they could expand the
domination of the world any further in the same manner that they had spread initially—through
the conquering of satellite nations through communism. Oxnam felt that Russia might turn to
war to continue to take over and control countries outside of its reach. Oxnam also saw
interdependence, “from the international point of view,” bring about the presence of the United
Nations. He saw these points, and more, as reason enough to ask, will Russia continue to attempt
20
Oxnam diary entry. Box 19, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
137
domination through peace, or through war?21 Nowhere did Oxnam consider the idea that Russia
would halt the spread of its communistic reach. It is important to note that Oxnam viewed
Russia’s continued expansion as a question of how—not if. Like many Americans in the 1950s,
propaganda and a general sense of fear persuaded Oxnam to believe that Russia desired nothing
short of global domination.
It is apparent that Oxnam confided his innermost thoughts in his diary. From his view of
the Cold War, Oxnam believed that America needed to build up “full military strength” and
match it with “political strategy of the highest order.” Considering the fact that for years
“Containment” had reigned supreme as America’s guiding foreign policy ideology as found in
National Security Council document 68, the Marshall Plan had been rolled out, and the United
Nations had been formed, Oxnam felt convinced that policy and the authoritative structures in
place measured up to sound and complimentary political tools and strategy.22
Oxnam often carried the most important points of these meetings with highly regarded
figures such as Dulles, Niebuhr, and Nolde with him. He maintained discretion when he
regularly tapped in to these meetings publicly. During a speech at St. Lawrence University in
Canton, New York on February 22, 1951, Oxnam told his audience, “America must counter
Russian influence with better applied ideas as well as with an imposing force of arms.” He added
that communism had been stalled in Europe because of “the Atlantic Pact, Marshall Plan aid, and
President Truman’s Four Point Program.” Yet, Oxnam warned, Russia, seeing her “force in
being” greater than American arms, “may thus strike Europe and Asia by force to capture the
21
22
Oxnam diary entry, December 18, 1951, Box 20, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Ibid.
138
potential needed to balance the United States.”23 Often in Oxnam’s calls for peace and public
pronouncements on the Cold War, he painted the Soviet-American standoff in dire and imminent
language. As the 1950s progressed, he tapered off his punctuated inflections of anxiety and
fear—yet his calls for coexistence and peaceful resolution matched his support for existing,
aggressive American foreign policy.
Oxnam on Domestic Issues: HUAC, Race, and America’s Place in the World
While Oxnam’s perspectives on American foreign policy directed toward the Soviet
Union stand as the major thrust of this chapter, his observations of the United States, in general,
bear discussion. Oxnam was progressive in his thought on many domestic issues. Through a
short discussion of Oxnam’s views on domestic issues, one may better understand a more
complete picture of his thinking on the 1950s in general and America’s place in the world,
specifically.
The 1950s contained much in the way of change on the American landscape. A major
uptick in consumerism had severe ramifications—positive and negative. The Cold War took on a
new arena of battle by proxy in the space race. Mainstream forms of entertainment drastically
changed with the introduction of new styles of clothing, music, television, food, and travel. In
some of the most hotly debated changes that occurred during the Eisenhower Administration,
Oxnam stuck to deeply held views. In fact, Oxnam is associated with his impact within the
domestic sphere of American life more so than in the realm of foreign affairs. This section pays
attention to three major issues: race, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and
domestic legislation dealing with military affairs. By exploring Oxnam’s interactions with each
23
Oxnam diary clipping, “Bishop Oxnam Urges More Unity in West: Methodist Leader
Says Ideas and Guns Needed to Beat Russian Threat.” Box 21, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
139
of these three topics, one may gain a more thorough sense of who Oxnam was, and how his
confrontations with these issues and bodies shaped his larger world-view.
Oxnam’s views on race were on par with many political and theologically liberal white
Americans. However, like many of the issues that he tended to, Oxnam occasionally acted more
hesitantly about certain matters in public than he did within the walls of his home. Oxnam
despised racism. He felt that it was truly one of the nation’s greatest shortcomings. Recounting a
memory of his days as a seminary student at Boston University, Oxnam recalled seeing “Pickens,
a great Negro” who was in his graduating class:
The day we graduated and I was walking down the hill, I saw him standing there.
I said, ‘Pickens, what’s the matter?’ Then he told me, that now it was over, he had
never been treated anywhere the way he had been treated at the School of
Theology. He was a man, not just a black man. Now he must return to all of the
discriminations his race suffers. I can see him now as he shook his head, dried his
eyes and walked away like a man.24
Undoubtedly, Oxnam gained a more racially accepting world view early, from his diverse
upbringing as a miner’s son in California, subsequent service as the pastor of a church in a
densely immigrant populated area of Los Angeles, and globe-trotting with Sherwood Eddie.
Oxnam makes it clear in his most intimate writings, though, that he despised Jim Crow
segregation. Following a trip to Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Oxnam opined:
My first impression of the station was repugnant—colored waiting room, white
waiting room. I went into the ticket office. What a contradiction it all is. Here is a
white man who waits upon people at two windows, one on one side for Negroes,
one on the other side for whites.25
24
25
Oxnam diary entry, March 11, 1950. Box 19, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Oxnam diary entry, April 1, 1951. Box 20, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
140
While Oxnam confided his disgust with racism to his diary and called for an end to racial
discrimination publicly, he did not go as far as he could have in speeding up the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s.26 He made no major overtures in the way of activism. Additionally, at
the 1954 World Church Council meeting in Evanston, Illinois, Oxnam (along with other WCC
presidents and President Eisenhower) spoke to a segregated crowd of 18,000.27 While his stances
on racism, Jim Crow segregation, and the hypocrisy of American foreign policy demands on
communist dictators in light of racism at home prove Oxnam to be ahead of the times, he
nonetheless balked in specific instances of paramount importance during the first twinklings of
the Civil Rights Movement. Oxnam’s legacy is less defined by his stance on race-relations than it
is with is vociferous, outsopoken denunciation of congressional communist witch-hunting.
The moment of Oxnam’s life that he is, perhaps, best remembered for is that of his
testimony in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in July, 1953. HUAC
Chairman Harold H. Velde, himself a Methodist, chaired the hearing that allowed Oxnam to
raise any issues that he found with HUAC’s personal file on Oxnam; and Oxnam had several
issues. The Oxnam hearing, which Oxnam published a personal account of in I Protest, came
about due to a series of actions at a time when national paranoia over communist infiltration was
at an all time high.
The importance of Oxnam’s HUAC hearing that occurred at a peak moment in America’s
anxiety over the spread and threat of communism cannot be understated. As previously
mentioned above, Oxnam’s own personal account of the hearing was published as I Protest,
among other places. Some of the nation’s leading newspapers, such as Washington Post and New
26
For Oxnam’s call for an end to racism at home, see Oxnam, “Proposals for Peace—IV”
The Nation 1953.
27
Photograph in Oxnam diary, n.d., Box 25, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
141
York Times, carried extracts of the investigation. U.S. News and World Report published the
entire transcript. NBC televised the entire hearing in order to present a half-hour long segment.
Though the clip is no longer available, an audio-taped recording of the hearing is available
today.28 Ultimately, Oxnam’s challenge to the legitimacy of HUAC’s investigations, or, the
committee’s basis for investigation and the labeling of certain individuals and groups as
communist, communist aid, or communist sympathizer, began the erosion of questionable
HUAC power.
In short, Oxnam had caught wind of HUAC’s sudden curiosity with, as HUAC Chairman
(and Methodist) Harold H. Velde, phrased it, “the church field.” Velde’s assertion that HUAC
would look into a growing number of Protestant leaders and laymen over questionable actions
occurred at the same time as Carl McIntire’s publication, Bishop Oxnam, Prophet of Marx, and
American Mercury magazine contributor Joseph Brown Matthews’ article, “Reds and Our
Churches.” In both of these publications, several Methodist preachers and bishops were
identified as communist party members. In McIntire’s publication, Oxnam was identified as the
most popular and radical representative of the pro-communist element within American religious
circles. It is publications like these, alongside former committees and organizations that Oxnam
participated in, as well as a sizeable Federal Bureau of Investigation dossier on Oxnam, that
made up the HUAC file on Oxnam. Oxnam responded to his critics, publicly, at several
instances. It was a tirade on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 17, 1953,
however, given by California Republican Representative Donald L. Jackson that prompted
Oxnam to challenge HUAC’s slanderous assertions. Jackson growled: “[Oxnam] has been to the
28
Miller, 576 and 578n1.
142
Communist front what Man O’ War was to thoroughbred horse racing…having served God on
Sunday and the Communist front for the balance of the week.”29
Oxnam sought a negotiated redress of his grievances with HUAC, to no avail, from
February through June of 1953. HUAC members were persistent in their attempts to deflect
Oxnam’s rebuttals to their larger investigatory processes concerning Protestant churches, leaders,
organizations, and individuals. Finally, Oxnam and HUAC settled on a date of July 21, 1953 to
hold a hearing in which Oxnam could speak to the evidence against his affiliation with the
Communist Party.
During the hearing, Oxnam aggressively pulled apart HUAC evidence—largely made up
of questionable hearsay, far-right-leaning publications, and baseless claims against
organizations—point by point. At an early point in the hearing, Oxnam stated:
Why did the individual who clipped derogatory statements concerning me fail to
clip such announcements as the following: My appointment by the Joint Chiefs of
Staff to visit the Mediterranean Theater and the European Theater of Operations
during the War; or my appointment by Secretary [of the Navy, James] Forrestal as
a member of the Secretary of the Navy’s Civilian Advisory Committee; or the
announcement that the Navy had awarded me the highly prized Certificate of
Appreciation for services during the War; or that I had been invited to be the
guest of Archbishop Damaskinos, then Regent of Greece, and that the King of
Greece had awarded me the Order of the Phoenix; or that I had represented the
American churches at the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury; or that I
had been appointed by the President as a member of the President’s Commission
on Higher Education; or that I was chairman of the Commission approved by the
President to study postwar religious conditions in Germany? This might be called
pertinent information. I have held the highest offices in the power of fellowchurchmen to confer upon me, such as the presidency of the Federal Council of
the Churches of Christ in America. I am one of the Presidents of the World
29
Congress, House, Representative Donald L. Jackson, 83rd Cong., 1st Sess.,
Congressional Record (March 17, 1953): 2024; Angela Lahr, “The Censure of a Bishop: Church
and State in the McCarthy Era,” Methodist History 44 (October, 2005): 29; Miller, 569.
143
Council of Churches, perhaps the highest honor that can come to a clergyman. I
hold positions of responsibility in the church I love and seek to serve, among
them, Secretary of the Council of Bishops.30
The hearing lasted from 2:30PM until 12:20AM in front of over five hundred spectators in the
Caucus Room of the Old House Office Building. HUAC members, including Chariman Velde,
Representative Jackson, and Michigan Republican Kit Clardy, became increasingly venomous as
Oxnam finished each point by questioning the procedures of the committee. In one instance, the
committee sprang questions reaching as far back as the 1930s and 1920s, which prompted one
reporter to comment, “The next question will be pre-natal.” As Oxnam continued on,
maintaining what appeared to be the coolest attitude in the room, another news reporter could be
overheard saying, “What a sight! A drunk congressman interrogating a Methodist bishop!” And
Oxnam proceeded on in this fashion, denying and exposing as false much of the information that
comprised his HUAC file.
Finally, after midnight, California Democrat Clyde Doyle moved “that the record show in
these hearings that this committee has no record of any Communist Party affiliation or
membership by Bishop Oxnam.” Surprisingly, this motion was seconded by Jackson, who had
compared Oxnam to Man O’War months earlier. Oxnam was not on the HUAC radar again
following his hearing. With its conclusion, Oxnam’s HUAC hearing punched a series of holes in
HUAC authority in the eyes of many Americans—members of Congress included.31
30
G. Bromley Oxnam, I Protest (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 38.
31
Oxnam diary entries, photograph, newspaper cartoon, and newspaper clippings, March
15, 1953 to June 3, 1953. Box 22, Oxnam Collection, LOC; Oxnam, “Rule by Slander,” The
Watchman Examiner, March 19, 1953; Miller, 575-579.
144
Oxnam’s thought on American foreign policy aimed at the Soviet Union is often stated
bluntly throughout the 1950s. Yet, an overview of his perspective of America and America’s role
in the world colors the broader scope of Oxnam’s worldview. As mentioned previously, Oxnam
was firmly in the camp of theological and political liberal thought. His own thoughts on God,
Jesus, salvation, the Bible, science, and churches have been explored above. His take on political
matters, however, further crystalizes who Oxnam was and what issues he felt passionately about.
His full-fledged support of the United Nations and positive image of the United States further
describe Oxnam’s association with mainstream, liberal thought in the 1950s.
Oxnam’s view of the world was a blend of suspicion and hopefulness. Oxnam found the
actions of HUAC Senators deplorable. He found the plight of blacks reprehensible in an age of
prosperity. He also found America to be wanting in several facets of its then-current state of
existence. Oxnam desired peace—with Russia as much as with any nation. He had several ideas
that he thought might bring the world closer to the one that he envisioned. For example, Oxnam
found a great benefit in the idea of a single, authoritative, “world law.” He imagined a path to
this end through the perfection of the United Nations: “Loyalty to the United Nations must be
developed, and those who would destroy it must be restrained.” Furthermore, Oxnam quipped,
“Concepts of absolute national sovereignty must give way to the idea of world law,
democratically determined.”32 He also felt that a starting point to improvement rested upon a
correction to the widespread economic disadvantage of the American citizenry: “Peace cannot be
built upon foundations of economic injustice.” Oxnam continued, “Positive programs of land
reform designed to give the disinherited peasant ownership of the land are essential to peace.”33
32
33
Oxnam, “Proposals for Peace—IV” The Nation 1953.
Ibid.
145
On a contradictory note, Oxnam suggested that Americans must come into world affairs
“with clean hands” by supporting “basic human rights and basic freedoms in world affairs,”
despite his rosy view of America’s history. On December 13, 1953, Oxnam told an audience of
1,500 at the First Church of Boston, in the history of America’s foreign affairs, “The American
has never been a bully and refuses to be led in that direction.”34 This whitewashing of oppressive
action at home against blacks, Native Americans, and Japanese, along with the oversight of
American actions a generation earlier in The Philippines, Mexico, and Hawaii, still did not
restrain Oxnam from pointing out perceived deficiencies in American government processes.
Oxnam frequently called out what he saw as hastily, or incorrectly made decisions or bills in
Congress.
In one instance, he called into question the plausibility of Congressional authority. After
returning from London and Paris in February of 1951, Oxnam publicly questioned what right
Congress had to determine how many troops were needed in Europe: “Nothing appears sillier to
me than a man getting up on the floor of the Senate to say he’s against communism and then
refusing to cooperate in providing the men and arms to fight communism.” Oxnam finished,
“Since when have Senators been qualified to tell military men how many men they need for
necessary operations?”35
Related to his views on bad decisions in the halls of power, Oxnam also perceived the
negative attributes of government overreach. Sensitive to the trend of churches losing dominion
over matters of community support and assistance to the needy, Oxnam believed that the country
34
Oxnam diary clipping, January, 1954, Box 24, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
Jerry Neil, “Bishop Oxnam Finished Wrestling With Devil Early, Now He Jousts With
Papists.” Page 1. Arkansas Gazette April 6, 1951. Oxnam clipping in 1951 Diary, Box 20,
Oxnam Collection, LOC.
35
146
would be improved if many of the matters that government programs tended to were handed over
to churches: “It is imperative that the number of private agencies, such as the…World Council of
Churches and the Church World Service…be increased to release the thought and the charity of
groups other than government.”36 To Oxnam, a general shifting of power from state to church,
and from sovereign nations to the United Nations spelled out the path to an improved society and
community of nations.
From this short series of examples, one can see that Oxnam held a wide array of views on
many matters. Like many inclined to fall to the left of the political spectrum, Oxnam found racial
reconciliation, economic fairness, if not redistribution, and international cooperation on
international matters worthwhile endeavors. At the same time, Oxnam chastised what he saw as
foul, negligible, or wrongheaded actions within Congress. His views that encouraged
international and ecumenical cooperation give a more robust description of what many of
Oxnam’s innermost thoughts were linked to.
Criticisms of Oxnam
As to be expected, none of Oxnam’s actions, public declarations, or perspectives on
domestic or foreign policy had the unanimous support of all Americans. Not all Protestant, or
even Methodist leaders demonstrated unfailing support for Oxnam. It is in the criticisms of
Oxnam that one may find the fault lines in America’s Protestant establishment. The three major
strains of Protestant Christianity in the 1950s were Neo-Orthodoxy, theologically-liberal, and
evangelical. These three strands surfaced between the end of World War II and the 1960s. But
even within each of these facets, cracks existed. It is apparent from Oxnam’s HUAC experience
36
Oxnam, “Proposals for Peace—IV” The Nation 1953.
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that he withstood pressure from the political far-right during the McCarthy-era domestic
communism probe that occurred. Whether through direct involvement or by affiliation, this same
political segment, to include some nationally recognized fundamentalist, Christian pastors and
preachers, represented the main source of Oxnam’s criticism.
Print was the medium that Oxnam was most often attacked through. Oxnam was typically
targeted for his anti-Catholic comments and his perceived association with communism between
the late 1940s and his HUAC hearing, in 1953. Though Herbert Hoover, the FBI, and the
Congressional HUAC members had Oxnam on their radar, it is the scalding derogatory remarks
of those within Oxnam’s own Protestant Christian community that reveal the lack of unanimity
within America’s Protestant Christian population.37
By and large, a number of Catholic, fundamentalist, and theologically conservative
churches took public swipes at Oxnam. Most of this was the result of Oxnam’s negative public
statements in the 1940s concerning the Catholic Church and his founding of the organization,
Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Oxnam’s leading
role in and continued association with the latter prompted backlash from Catholics and
Protestants alike. The Dubuque, Iowa Catholic Witness cited the Washington Times Herald’s
description of Oxnam as an “outspoken foe of Catholicism” in their story that portrayed Oxnam
as standing firm on his dislike of Catholics and outright embrace of communism.38 The same
37
Aside from providing Oxnam’s HUAC members with helpful information prior to
Oxnam’s hearing, Hoover also made his thoughts on Oxnam clear, publicly. In a response to one
reporter’s questions concerning organizations that Oxnam belonged to, Hoover replied, “I
confess to a real apprehension, so long as Communists are able to secure ministers of the gospel
to promote their evil work,” “Bishop Oxnam, Scarritt Speaker ‘Member Communistic Fronts’,”
The Nashville Record. March 4, 1952.
38
“Washington’s Protestant Bishop…Hard on Catholics; Soft With Commies,” Catholic
Witness, June 19, 1952.
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story, carried by the Tuscon Arizona Register, described Oxnam as a “two-fisted preacher,” who
has “flailed with equal enthusiasm at what he has considered excesses of capitalism and
Catholicism.”39
When discussing Catholicism in the 1950s, one must remember that the Catholic Church
looked and functioned much differently then than it did after 1965. The years of the Eisenhower
Administration encompassed the final years of the Catholic Church’s pre-Vatican II era. This
distinction is important due to the place that the Catholic Church held in American society before
and after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Formally the Second Vatican Ecumenical
Council, or Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum, this twenty-first ecumenical council
gathering of the Catholic Church—the second at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican—resulted in
several major changes throughout the Catholic Church.40 In the main, Catholic leaders addressed
relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world through a series of constitutions,
declarations, documents, and statements. Among these, the use of vernacular languages in the
Mass, revisions of the liturgy, bishops’ garments, the ability to celebrate Mass with the officiant
facing the congregation, and new approaches to historical criticism of the Bible all featured
prominently as changes to Catholic life. The results of Vatican II changed the Catholic Church
and reframed American perspectives of Catholicism’s interaction with the world.41
Members of the Catholic Church rejected communism during the 1950s on par with
members of Protestant Christian churches. Perhaps best personified in Catholic Archbishop
39
“Press Jabs Dr. Oxnam Upon Anti-Catholic Bias,” Tuscon Arizona Register, June 20,
1952.
40TheSecondVaticanEcumenicalCouncilisthetranslationoftheLatinConcilium
Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum. Italicized emphasis on the Latin is my own.
41
For a thorough discussion of Vatican II, see John O’Malley, What Happened at
Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).
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Fulton Sheen (1895-1979), whose radio and television programs reached millions of listeners,
Catholics found common ground with Protestants in their anti-communism. In one example,
Sheen denounced the leadership of the Soviet Union during a presentation in February of 1953,
concluding with the warning that Joseph Stalin would one day meet his judgment. Sheen issued
this stern statement days before Stalin suffered a stroke and died.42
Oxnam encountered greater opposition from outside of the Catholic community. The
growing minority of far-right conservative Christians represented the swath of Protestant
Christians that publicly attacked Oxnam with the greatest frequency. This group of American
Christians was represented in some of the most ascendant groups of the late 1950s and 1960s:
The ACCC, ICCC, Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, and John Birch Society. While some of
these organizations were founded out of a religious impulse and some out of a political impulse,
all of the above—in one fashion or another—touted beliefs, goals, and perspectives of both
religious and political conservatism. At the heart of all of them was a deep sense of vitriol toward
communism and “liberalism”—though this term was applied as a blanket to encompass many
facets of theological liberalism, support for more socially liberal domestic policies at home, and
approaches to foreign affairs that were considered to be less than assertive.
These groups and the individuals that comprised them came out against Oxnam and the
Methodist Church regularly. The founding of the ACCC and ICCC represented a less-than-subtle
backlash against the mechanisms and work of the FCC, and later, NCC. As discussed in Chapter
Two, the members of the ACCC and ICCC, along with individuals adhering to the work of the
Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, among others, found the direction that theologically liberal
42
See, Thomas Reeves, America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (New
York: Encounter Books, 2001) and Kathleen Riley, Fulton J. Sheen: An American Catholic
Response to the Twentieth Century (New York: Alba House, 2003).
150
church leaders and organizations took in the early Cold War reprehensible. Anything that could
be perceived as sympathetic to communism was a target for these groups.
In 1952, the Evangelical Methodist Church’s publication, The Evangelical Methodist,
carried a story by Dr. W.O.H. Garman, the Vice President of the American Council of Christian
Churches, titled “Oxnam Worked With Communists and Communist Fronts.” Either Oxnam,
“pink Methodist” preachers, or other theologically liberal church leaders were the direct object of
scorn in several instances of Carl McIntire’s radio program and Billy James Hargis’ Christian
Crusade. Indeed, even after a Congressional committee had formally cleared Oxnam of “any
Communist Party affiliation” in 1953, Oxnam continued to receive public lashes from the same
segment of conservative Christians.
Carl McIntire led the ACCC to attack Oxnam in a speech called “How Communism is
Using the Church-a Challenge to Bishop Oxnam,” in December of 1953 during the ACCC’s
meeting at Hollywood American Legion Stadium. Using familiar and redundant generalizations,
McIntire and his council charged that “[Oxnam] and other church leaders are using the church to
promote Marxist Socialism.” McIntire railed against the perceived communist infiltration of
theologically liberal churches often throughout the 1950s and Oxnam was a favorite target. It
was the rapid insurgence of such attack pieces in print media—publications of both conservative
churches and organizations, along with mainstream media—that brought about the rise of
conservative forces on the fringe of the theological and political spectrum. It was also public
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declarations such as these referenced that demonstrated the growing cracks across the face of
Protestant Christianity.43
Oxnam’s Recounting of a Life’s Work
Toward the end of the 1950s, Oxnam’s hindsight revealed regrets in some instances and
clarity in others. In most cases, Oxnam remained inconsistent in his assessments of foreign
policy that was directed toward the Soviet Union as well as his approximation of EisenhowerDulles approaches to international affairs. During the Autumn of 1957, Oxnam began to
privately admit his doubts of Dulles’ Cold War strategy. Considering Dulles’ Foreign Affairs
article, “Challenge and Response in United States Policy,” Oxnam found the basis of the
Secretary of State’s message “disappointing.” In an example of Oxnam’s more hawkish stance
on Cold War diplomacy, he found Dulles’ foreign policy not aggressive enough: “It is brilliantly
done, argued with the rare skill that he possesses, but is based upon the assumption that our
policy is one of response.” Oxnam thought that if America could be the “challenging party,
forcing response,” in the stalemate with Russia, America could be “in a much stronger
position.”44 Oxnam had no suggestion for tactics to use in forcing Soviet response, but would
have found massive retaliation and brinksmanship lacking.
Oxnam openly expressed his feelings concerning foreign policy, Eisenhower, and his
close friend, Dulles. These personal and private conclusions were, in the main, restricted to his
43
Oxnam diary clipping, Dr. W.O.H. Garman, “Oxnam Worked With Communists and
Communist Fronts,” The Evangelical Methodist, 1952, Diaries and Journals Miscellaneous,
1903-1960, Box 31, Oxnam Collection, LOC; Oxnam diary clippings, “Church Leader to Attack
Methodist Bishop Oxnam,” December 1, 1953; “Reds Permeate Many Churches, Says Leader,”
Los Angeles Times, Thursday, December 17, 1953, 2; “Pastor Flays Church Marxism;” “McIntire
Hits Oxnam Aid to Red Program;” and “Christian Churches Chief Tells Red Infiltration,” Box
22, Oxnam Collection, LOC. See also, Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 543.
44
Oxnam diary entry, October 20, 1957, Box 31, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
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diary. Oxnam, like many other leading Protestant pastors, preachers, and bishops, found the final
years of Eisenhower’s second term as years marked by a general loss of prestige on
Eisenhower’s part. Granted, many American presidential administrations lose popularity in the
closing months and years of a second term. However, Oxnam was very specific in his
approximation of the sources of Eisenhower’s loss of prestige.
On New Year’s Day in 1958, Oxnam penned in his diary, “President Eisenhower’s loss
of prestige is, I fear, but an expression of the inability of contemporary business leadership to
understand what is going on in the world.” In sum, Oxnam found Eisenhower’s source of
authority as the nation’s pastor diminished. He found Eisenhower to have lost the respect of
America’s business class—or those in positions of power in the national business community—
to their own greed. Oxnam perceived Eisenhower as having lost the command and religious
authority that typically comes with the office of the President in the face of consumerism and
opportunistic profit. Surprisingly, Oxnam found Dulles as worthy of this blame for the same
reasons, “With the fullest respect for Mr. Dulles, and I admire him deeply, we lack the
challenging voice of the Woodrow Wilson period, of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era.”
Oxnam wondered if his dear friend in the State Department who had expressed his desire for a
closer relationship between church and state in years past could provide words to the American
populous that dealt with “repentance, reconciliation, regeneration, not to speak of realism,
reassessment, readjustment, and many more.”45
Oxnam’s critique of the leaders and policies that he unabashedly supported throughout
much of the 1950s became more pronounced as the Eisenhower Administration drew to a close.
In the few short months that Dulles spent between stepping down from the Secretary of State
45
Oxnam diary entry, January 1, 1958, Box 32, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
153
post on April 22, 1959 and his death on May 24, 1959, Oxnam made an abrupt shift on his
perception of Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policies. In late March of the same year, Oxnam
considered new Secretary of State Christian Herter in light of Dulles’ absence in his diary.
Oxnam found Herter “much quieter” than Dulles. He also considered Herter to be “just as
effective if not more so, and without the limitation of policy based upon deterrents, massive
resistance, ability to retaliate, and so on.” In retrospect, Oxnam came to the realization that the
foreign policy direction that Eisenhower and Dulles took in the grand scheme of the Cold War
led America—and all of the nations that were affected by the struggle—down the wrong path.
Oxnam revealed:
There are real questions that come to mind as to Mr. Dulles’ contribution. I held
Mr. Dulles in very high esteem and continue to do so, but sooner or later you are
up against a stone wall when your policy is apparently based upon certain
inflexibilities. He was of the opinion that people could not tolerate the [Chinese]
dictator [Mao Zedong] indefinitely, that sooner or later freedom would win out.
However, what do you do when you refuse to have anything to do really with
600,000,000 people in China. Sooner or later we had to come to it with regard to
the Russians and we deal with them now.46
Toward the end of his tenure with the Methodist Church, Oxnam not only doubted some
of his earlier support for Eisenhower and Dulles’ foreign policies toward the Soviet Union, but
also his own thoughts on how the United States should proceed in the Cold War. His public
support for American foreign policy wavered, as reported by the New York Times, in 1958. The
November 14th edition of the Times printed Oxnam’s desire to bring Russians to America in the
hopes of strengthening ties between the two powers. In the same article, Oxnam also came out
46
Oxnam diary entry, March 27, 1959, Box 33, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
154
against his American government’s decision not to recognize China.47 To be sure, he denounced
the communist system until the end. However, when reflecting upon his decisions over the
course of the years of the Eisenhower Administration, Oxnam found himself to be unsure of
whether his full-fledged support of his friend and Secretary of State was well-founded, or offered
in too quickly.
Conclusion
Oxnam was a force to be reckoned with in American religious history. His rapid flurry of
publications, interviews, speeches, and lectures are hard to fathom. Oxnam’s biographer claims
that no other Protestant minister of Oxnam’s generation could match Oxnam’s record of
fulfilling—in person—speaking engagements numbering “hundreds annually over the period of
four decades.”48 Oxnam edited five books and wrote seventeen in addition to thousands of
articles and news columns. While a mere handful of his publications still hold interest today,
Oxnam’s outpouring of written and spoken commentary was more than worthwhile to his
readership throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
Oxnam regularly and publicly called for peaceful discussion between the Soviet Union
and America between the end of WWII and the end of his life, in 1963. He frequently advised
against the dangers of the arms race and claimed that dialogue between the two powers was the
best foreign policy option. His actions were nonetheless contradictory. Whether in private
correspondence between himself and Dulles, personal conversations with Eisenhower, or notices
47
“Bishop Urges Russians to Visit US,” New York Times, November 19, 1958, Oxnam
diary clipping, Box 33, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
48
Miller, 348-349. Miller acknowledges Billy Graham’s crowds at crusades, Reinhold
Niebuhr’s speaking regiment, and Harry Emerson Fosdick’s radio audience that reached
millions. He strongly emphasizes large, in person addresses that, for Oxnam, averaged ten talks a
week. The period between 1940 and 1955 was the height of Oxnam’s lecture circuit.
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sent to tens of thousands of Methodists, Oxnam encouraged and promoted the whole of existing
American foreign policy. This foreign policy departed, in many ways, from the calls for peace,
discussion, and understanding that Oxnam argued so vehemently for. As Oxnam welcomed the
U.S. government’s foreign policy throughout the 1950s in greater measure, he continued to call
for peace. As the 1950s progressed, however, his peaceful rhetoric became less frequent.
Oxnam’s legacy does not hinge upon his forays into America’s foreign policy
conversation. He is remembered more today for his challenge to the legitimacy of HUAC
accusations and for his anti-Catholic suspicion of Kennedy’s ability to serve as President. He is
also revered, among those who remember him favorably, for his work with the Methodist
Church. From USC to his several appointments as Bishop, Oxnam grew up, lived, and worked
within the Methodist Church. Although Oxnam is associated more with America’s domestic
history rather than America’s foreign relations history, his life is instructive in several ways.
Oxnam was arguably the most prominent and well-known theologically liberal Christian during
his adult life. He interacted with and conveyed his ideas to many thousands of Americans
throughout his professional career. He is representative and reflective of politically and
theologically liberal Christians with regard to his opinions of the Cold War.
The willingness among Americans to characterize communists as atheist, godless, and
evil transcended any individual identification with theological or political strands. Degrees of
variation existed throughout the American public, but many Americans accepted the policy of
containment as the best tool in the fight against communism. In this, most theologically liberal
Christians agreed with the whole of America’s religious population. The desire for peace and an
end to the tensions produced by the Cold War was a shared American sentiment. Yet, the best
defense available against the exchange of nuclear bombs was also a coveted means of assurance
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among most Americans throughout the anxiety-filled years of the Eisenhower Administration. In
this short overview of Oxnam’s relationship to American foreign policy directed toward the
Soviet Union, one finds a representative slice of the contradictory emotions many Americans
felt: contentment with economic prosperity, fear of nuclear war, pride in America’s global
supremacy, worry over communism’s advancement, happiness with America’s religious mood,
and caution in global affairs.
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CHAPTER 7
ALPHABET SOUP: THE EXTENSION OF PERSUASION
Several simultaneously occurring events, to include the phenomenon of the baby-boom
population spike, the sharp increase of suburban homes, and the anti-communist fears of many
Americans in the 1950s gave rise to an increase of new religious organizations. Throughout the
decade, a number of existing religious organizations grew and gained strength due to the
exacerbation of anti-communist sentiment, the shifting demographics of the country’s
population, and the heightened popularity of civil religion within the country. Within many these
groups, G. Bromley Oxnam, Billy Graham, and Reinhold Niebuhr often played a significant role
in furthering the influence and impact of several religious organizations’ goals. This chapter
outlines several of the most prominent and most important Protestant religious groups that
existed during Eisenhower’s presidency. Through a discussion of these groups’ efforts toward
channeling the national dialogue centered upon anti-communism and foreign policy directed
toward the Soviet Union, this chapter reinforces Graham, Oxnam, and Niebuhr’s place in the
larger American religious community. It also shows the more attentive hearing that the United
States government and the greater American public gave to many of America’s religious
organizations. In demonstrating this, it is apparent that the heightened religious mood in the
country furnished America’s Protestant leadership with unprecedented power in both acting as a
mouthpiece for Americans and providing support for Eisenhower and Dulles foreign policies.
This chapter dedicates most of its attention to select groups, as an exhaustive, detailed
examination of each religious organization that operated during Eisenhower’s Administration
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falls outside of the scope of this dissertation. In particular, this chapter considers the National
Council of Churches (NCC), which grew out of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), the
World Council of Churches (WCC), which was more international in scope, both the American
Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) and the International Council of Christian Churches
(ICCC), which were each more theologically conservative and came about at the discretion of
pastor, radio host, and Christian Beacon founder Carl McIntire, and the National Association of
Evangelicals (NAE), which, founded in 1943, represented an organization that offered an
alternative group for evangelicals in the post-WWII years. Evangelicals who filled the NAE’s
ranks desired an outlet different from longstanding theologically liberal organizations and more
in line with the theological perspective and worldview of leading figures such as Carl F.H.
Henry, Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and Charles Fuller.
Additionally, organizations that were smaller in size, more focused in their missions, and
very obviously a product of the political and religious mood of the mid-twentieth century are
also considered as their actions (and very existence) spoke heavily to the competing views of
American foreign policy during the Eisenhower Administration. Examples of these groups
include, but are not limited to: Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the John Birch Society, and
the Christian Freedom Foundation.
A discussion of the major religious organizations in America during the early years of the
Cold War reveals several important points. First, the nature of America’s religious infrastructure
underwent significant change. The most obvious component of this change was the noticeable
and sizable increase in church membership and broad expression of religiosity. For example,
sociologist Will Herberg garnered great academic and public interest with the publication of his
Protestant, Catholic, Jew in 1955 by demonstrating that the majority of Americans identified as
159
Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. These labels, though, were often overshadowed by Americans’
lack of attention to creeds and theologies. Rather, Herberg argued, Americans largely promoted
religion as faith in faith itself. This examination of America’s “super-religion,” outlined many
Americans’—who made up most of the country’s three major faiths—acknowledgement and
acceptance of civil religion.1
Second, a larger number of American Protestant individuals in leadership positions
enjoyed a greater amount of attention from the American public and from important members of
the United States government over the course of the 1950s. This position of enhanced
prominence was aided greatly by national anti-communist fears and the very real sense of dread
that many Americans held with regard to nuclear war. During these years of anxiety the
American public sought solace, comfort, and assurance from their religious leaders.
Third, as the standard bearers of their respective strands of Protestant Christianity,
Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and G. Bromley Oxnam exhibited a sense of agency and a
level of influence that few other Protestant leaders could claim. In first turning to the connection
that Billy Graham maintained with an impressive constellation of organizations, this chapter
shows the centrality of Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam in America’s religious community. It also
points up the complexity of America’s Protestant Christian composition during Eisenhower’s
years in office while, at the same time, provides clarity in understanding the complicated
relationships that existed among Christian churches, denominations, groups, and individuals.
1
Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 263; Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the
Presidency, 286; for an overview of the historiography of civil religion and the positions that
historians have maintained on the benefit or harm of civil religion, see Pierard and Linder, Civil
Religion and the Presidency, 284-287.
160
Billy Graham’s Extensive Network
Billy Graham’s star was on the rise due to a number of factors in the 1950s. Aside from a
heightened awareness of the time the he lived in, a successful diversification of his own ministry,
and his own general appeal, Graham successfully interacted with a number of individuals and
organizations that fell in line with his evangelical wing of American Protestants. Along with the
benefits that general support from these organizations afforded Graham, the popular evangelist
also enjoyed a steady stream of pertinent information from this growing base of evangelical
groups. From a myriad of organizations, Graham was able to capitalize on a steady stream of
information, insight, and opinion from across the country. One example, the Philadelphia-based
Evangelical Foundation, Incorporated, demonstrates as much.
The Evangelical Foundation, Inc. was a small organization founded in 1949 to serve as
the heart of fundamentalist Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse’s (1895-1960)
ministry. By the time of Eisenhower’s Administration, Barnhouse had already enjoyed a
successful career as a pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church (where he served in
this role from 1927-1960), a Bible conference organizer and host, a pioneer radio preacher, and
Christian magazine editor. Like several other religious organizations, Barnhouse’s Evangelical
Foundation, Inc. represented a sliver of the larger body of Protestant ministries, organizations,
and groups that existed or were created in the post-WWII years. Also like other such groups,
Evangelical Foundation, Inc. served as a breeding ground for future political and religious
leaders. The Vice-President of the Board of Directors for Evangelical Foundation, Inc. was C.
161
Everett Koop, M.D. (1916-2013). Koop, of course, would go on to serve as President Ronald
Reagan’s (1911-2004) Surgeon General from 1982 to 1989.2
Graham benefitted from a collegial relationship with Barnhouse and the Evangelical
Foundation, Inc. over the course of many years. Graham counted on Barnhouse in supporting the
1957 New York Crusade in the role of a “research assistant,” often providing Graham with
religious trends and demographics of the area. He also utilized contacts like Barnhouse to
capitalize on pertinent information when it either aided him in advance work leading up to largescale revivals and crusades or in avoiding potential, figurative landmines. Barnhouse’s
Evangelical Foundation, Inc. represents one of many organizations similar in size and worldview
that directly benefitted Graham’s ministry while furthering their own independent organizational
goals.3
Graham often sought information and recommendations from the National Association of
Evangelicals (NAE) and, as discussed in chapter four, Graham’s father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell.
These two sources occupied a central place in Graham’s day-to-day decisions. Both the NAE and
Bell retained an extensive network of contacts throughout various Protestant Christian circles.
The NAE was organized in the early 1940s and sought to work as a means of more effectively
carrying out Christ’s commission for his followers to “evangelize the world.” According to the
NCC, the NAE was a “voluntary cooperative service organization of evangelical churches,
2
Evangelical Foundation letter, June 1, 1962, “Donald Grey Barnhouse Papers, circa
1860s-2000s” Box 5, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA (hereafter PHS).
Biographical information for Barnhouse from PHS, “Guide to the Donald Grey Barnhouse
Papers, circa 1860s-2000s” Binder, Record Group 480, 1-3.
3
“19,200 Pack Garden; Visitation Evangelism Program Outlined,” August 30, 1957,
“The Billy Graham New York Crusade News,” “Donald Grey Barnhouse Papers, circa 1860s2000s” Box 6, “Graham, Billy Correspondence” File, PHS.
162
denominations, mission organizations, ministerial fellowships, evangelistic organizations, and
individuals.”4
This group’s very existence spoke to the immense popularity of Graham’s ministry. At
the start of Eisenhower’s first term in office, the NAE boasted over 1.6 million members from
over 18,000 churches.5 Many of the NAE’s rank-and-file maintained a view of American foreign
policy that dealt with the Soviet Union in a vein similar or equal to Graham’s. While Graham’s
public pronouncements concerning the Cold War resonated with multitudes of evangelical
Americans, it was not a unanimously embraced perspective.
As previously discussed, Graham often took a hardline stance against communism.
Though a popular position for the time, Graham’s anti-communist rhetoric was chastised by the
likes of Reinhold Niebuhr for Graham’s lack of pragmatic, feasible foreign policy suggestions.
Niebuhr often blasted Graham’s call for a collective expression of Christian love as the answer to
Cold War tensions.6 Niebuhr did not find that saving souls through mass conversions represented
the cure-all for Soviet-American hostility. Despite criticism, Graham’s approach to American
Cold War strategy directed toward the Soviet Union was extremely popular with evangelicals
across the country. This receptiveness was especially apparent within the ranks of the NAE.
At the 12th annual convention of the NAE in Cleveland, Ohio, the organization’s thenformer president Harold J. Ockenga proclaimed his support for Graham’s stance on the Cold
War. Before his audience at Cleveland’s Hollenden Hotel, Ockenga declared, “The Communist
4
NCC Press sheet, “What is the National Association of Evangelicals?,” April 25-30,
1954, “NCC Special Topics, 1951-1970” Box 6, “N, O” Folder, PHS.
5
See appendix 3.
6
Letter from Niebuhr to Reverend Johannes Ringstad of the Immanuel Lutheran Church
in Escanaba, Michigan, April 26, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 10, “Rh-Ri” Folder, Niebuhr
Papers, LOC.
163
propaganda must be counteracted by aggressive proclamation of truth concerning God, moral
law, the value of man, the privilege of freedom and humanitarian considerations.” Ockenga
assured his listeners, “Only the Christian revelation and gospel is sufficient to establish these
truths. The time has come when we must show the world that Christianity is the answer—and the
only answer.”7
The main message of Graham’s long and successful ministry was the main message of
the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”8 Graham kept this invitation to
conversion at the forefront of all of his pastoral efforts over the course of a lifetime. While this
accounts for some of Graham’s popularity, the North Carolina dairy-farm boy turned worldrenowned evangelist remained in the public eye due to his ability to keep his message relevant to
the times. In the 1950s, this meant communicating the message of the Gospel in light of the Cold
War. Graham welcomed connections with organizations that fell outside of the scope of
Evangelical Foundation, Inc. or the NAE. During the uncertain years of Eisenhower
Administration, when, early on, the threat of nuclear war was a reality, Graham made efforts to
kindle relationships with anti-communist religious groups.
Graham and his father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, established a number of contacts with anticommunist religious organizations in the 1950s. Adding such groups to the Graham ministry’s
repertoire in the 1950s further supported Graham’s frequent descriptions of the scourge of
communism in his popular crusades and rallies. During the 1950s, Graham, Bell, or a
combination of the two exchanged correspondence with the Catholic Freedom Foundation, the
7
NAE press release, April 28, 1954, “NCC Special Topics, 1951-1970” Box 6, “N, O”
Folder, PHS.
8
John 3:16.
164
Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., and Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian Anti-Communism
Crusade (CACC). 9
While groups such as the Catholic Freedom Foundation, Christian Freedom Foundation,
Inc., and Evangelical Foundation, Inc. supported Graham, L. Nelson Bell, and Christianity
Today through information, logistical favors, or financial support, Fred Schwarz and his CACC
maintained a unique relationship with the Graham ministry.10 Dr. Fred Schwarz emigrated from
Australia in 1952, leaving behind his medical practice for the opportunity to proclaim his anticommunist message across America. Schwarz claimed to have made his decision to completely
abandon his comfortable life in Australia because of his faith. He found communism antithetical
to his understanding of evangelical Christianity.
Soon after arriving in America, Schwarz began making public speeches and radio
addresses across the nation, urging the American public to utilize religion as their chief weapon
in the fight against communism. After attending Billy Graham’s crusade in Detroit in 1953, the
physician-turned-political and religious-barnstormer met with Graham. Graham, who had not
only heard of Schwarz, but was also impressed by his anticommunist message, offered to aid
Schwarz in establishing contacts within the United States Congress. By the mid-1950s, Schwarz
had become a valuable contact within the Graham ministry. Schwarz continued to address
9
“RE: Our Nation’s Peril,” June 29, 1961, “General Correspondence” Box, Catholic
Freedom Foundation” Folder, BGCA. Also, see letter from W.F. Strube to L. Nelson Bell, July
17, 1959 and letter from Bell to Strube, December 1, 1958, “General Correspondence” Box,
“Christian Anti-Communism Crusade” Folder, BGCA. See also letter from John A. Huffman to
L. Nelson Bell, December 30, 1960, “General Correspondence” Box, “Christian Freedom
Foundation 1958-1970” Folder, BGCA.
10
Aside from Christianity Today’s wide distribution, support from groups and
individuals like Catholic Freedom Foundation, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., and
Christian Anti-Communism Crusade helped propel the journal beyond the subscription rate of
rival Christian Century in six short years.
165
members of Congress in breakfast gatherings and unofficial meetings. His CACC grew in
popularity as the anti-communist group held School of Anti-Communism classes across the
nation. Before the 1950s came to a close, Schwarz’s CACC had attracted scores of participants
to classes in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, San Diego, San
Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.11
Additionally, his CACC-sponsored pamphlets, such as “Communism…a disease!” and
his newsletters, which offered advice on everything from how to prepare for spiritual warfare to
which books and films to avoid, intensified the fears of his followers.12 Schwarz’s message was
heard in CACC anti-communism classes, for a $5 per day entrance fee, neighborhood study
groups, through radio tapes and films, and lectures in churches, schools, clubs, military and civic
groups.13 This connection from Graham to Schwarz only supplemented the overall reach of
Graham’s ministry and intensified the evangelist’s message. Through networking with the most
recognizable anti-communist personalities during the years of the Eisenhower Administration,
Graham further solidified the grasp of his sermons in the eyes of his crusade audiences and his
ministry’s followers.
Oxnam’s Theologically Liberal Reach
Oxnam’s professional contacts in the Protestant circles of America were as widespread
and extensive as any other figurehead of most American industries. A well-seasoned world
11
Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian
America (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 148-151.
12
Schwarz, “Communism…a disease!” pamphlet, “Christian Anti-Communist
Movement 1958-1961,” and Christian Anti-Communism Crusade Newsletter, February, 1961,
“Communism, 1934-1961” Folder, Box 18. BGCA.
13
Schwarz, “Communism…a disease!” pamphlet, “Christian Anti-Communist
Movement 1958-1961” Folder, Box 18. BGCA.
166
traveller, Oxnam had established an impressive amount of acquaintances in various and
important places. His connections to the John Foster Dulles family, links with President Harry S.
Truman, President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Mott, John D. Rockefeller, and
collegial relationship with President Eisenhower and several Congressmen during Eisenhower’s
two terms provided Oxnam connections to some of the most recognizable, powerful figures in
the world.
Oxnam’s years of work collaborating with individuals in national and international
ecumenical organizations granted him an air of prominence and respectability among America’s
leading churchmen. Dr. O. Frederick Nolde (1899-1972), a professor at Philadelphia’s Lutheran
Theological Seminary who worked with Oxnam on the FCC’s Commission of Churches on
International Affairs, Union Theological Seminary Presidents Henry Pitney Van Dusen (18971975) and Rev. John C. Bennett (1902-1995), and Dutch theologian and WCC Secretary General
Willem A. Visser’t Hooft (1900-1985) represent a fraction of the leading Protestant theologians,
pastors, reverends, and bishops that Oxnam counted as professional acquaintances and friends.
To an extent, Reinhold Niebuhr supported Oxnam at several instances—especially in Oxnam’s
brief bout with the HUAC Committee. This large network of personal and professional
relationships provided a wide array of contacts for Oxnam that represented a sizable portion of
his source of prominence. These individuals that sat upon the pillars of power in religious and
secular circles consulted with Oxnam on many matters. In some instances, Oxnam’s suggestions
or directives were heeded.
During Eisenhower’s two terms in office, the structure of American society was much
different than it was a generation prior. It was also much different than it would be a generation
later. To be sure, many of the institutions that worked as a base of operations for some of the
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most influential figures in the country remained in tact in the 1950s. Some of these organizations
provided aspiring politicians, rising corporate stars, and community leaders inroads to expanding
their own networks and professional relationships. Some of these groups were logical starting
places for individuals that were resolved to climb the professional ladder of their choice. The
local Lion’s Club, Elks Lodge, Kiwanis Club, Moose Lodge, or YMCA remained viable choices
for up and coming professionals to join. While many of these community-focused groups and
organizations—which maintained longstanding histories and records of growth—certainly
appealed, mostly, to middle-aged white male adults, religious organizations began to outpace
such organizations in stature and importance.
The above-mentioned organizations were meaningful to many Americans in the 1950s.
Along with labor groups, multi-industry corporate groups, and other social-improvement groups,
they collectively represented a means of charity and giving. They also represented networks that
promised personal growth and professional betterment for a large swath of Americans. Within
larger national discussions of power and importance, however, Protestant Christian groups won
many more newspaper headlines, television air time minutes, and hours of government
leadership discussion than did any other group in the United States. The NCC, WCC, and other
religious organizations factored heavily into national dialogue centered on everything from
social ills to foreign policy. Church members, print and television media, and government
leaders sought out individual churchmen, as they were called, for advice and guidance on the
most demanding topics of the day. In some instances, these religious organizations were used as
tools by the U.S. government in highlighting the spiritual nature of the Cold War.
Many examples of the White House and State Department showcasing religious leaders
and organizations’ anti-communism in their framing of the Cold War abound. In several of these
168
examples, Oxnam’s participation is evident. One such example places Oxnam behind the scenes
of the 1954 World Council of Churches assembly in Evanston, Illinois. As previously mentioned
in chapter six, President Eisenhower appeared at this gathering and spoke to the crowd of
125,000 people gathered in Soldier Field for the festivities. In November of the previous year,
Oxnam presented his memorandum and invitation to President Eisenhower at the White House,
hoping to secure the Commander-in-Chief’s presence and commitment to speaking at the WCC’s
second annual gathering. Following his trip to the White House, Oxnam penned in his diary, “I
was only there a few minutes, and I think everything went well.”14 Indeed, Oxnam’s invitation
was accepted, but his pitch may not have been the sole deciding factor for Eisenhower.
To say the first two years of Eisenhower’s first term were busy would be an
understatement. Along with several other duties and responsibilities, the President sought to
grapple with the complexities of increased hostility between America and the Soviet Union.
Taking a cue from Harry S. Truman’s approach, Eisenhower latched on to the notion of fleshing
out the defining of the Cold War in religious terms. Doing so further cultivated broad support
among the general public for foreign policy objectives, bolstered his role as the nation’s
shepherd, and improved his currency as a trustworthy, just, and moral leader.
Part of Eisenhower’s strategy included a restructuring of the nation’s intelligence
community. One of the main thrusts behind this decision was putting a propaganda machine into
place that was strong enough to maintain widespread American support for the Eisenhower
Administration’s foreign policy goals. This restructuring brought about the United States
Information Agency (USIA) in August of 1953 and the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) a
month later. USIA assumed responsibility for national propaganda operations, which, until then,
14
Oxnam diary entry, November 4, 1953, Box 23, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
169
were conducted at the State Department, and the OCB worked closely with the National Security
Council, which created NSC-68, the blueprint for America’s containment strategy, in
implementing psychological operations. Eisenhower’s new vision for government
communications with the American public concerning the Cold War was in place just ahead of
Oxnam’s invitation to connect with multitudes of Protestant Americans at an event celebrating
Christianity in the heart of America.15
While Oxnam’s impact on the crafting of foreign policy is irrelevant, save the personal
conversations he had with Secretary of State Dulles in advance of State Department decisions,
the Methodist Bishop’s role in bolstering the relationship between religion and nationalism is
notable. Oxnam’s impressive array of contacts throughout the theologically liberal Protestant
infrastructure of America accounts for this ability. Either the acquaintance or close friend of a
multitude of American Protestantism’s most prominent and important figures, Oxnam leveraged
his own power in carrying out the fight against communism. The extent of Oxnam’s influence is
notable when considering his ability to coordinate huge bodies of inter-church councils and
organizations, Methodist churchgoers, and government figures in furthering his idea of how to
confront the Soviet Union in the early and most intense years of the Cold War.
The World of Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr’s reach was markedly different than that of Oxnam’s or Graham’s.
While the extent of Oxnam’s reach into the American public was especially apparent with
theologically liberal Protestants and Graham’s nation-wide evangelical movement shaped the
terms of the Cold War in many conservative and fundamentalist evangelical homes, Niebuhr’s
15
Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle
against Communism in the Early Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 129-130.
170
range was all encompassing. One of the most recognizable and renowned churchmen of the
1950s, Niebuhr had one foot in the world of Protestant Christianity and another in international
diplomacy. Many Americans, both secular and religious, cherished Niebuhr’s observations on
religion in America and on the Soviet-American standoff, even as his health diminished over the
course of the 1950s.
The extent of Niebuhr’s network of contacts was impressive. Though covered in chapter
1, Niebuhr interacted frequently with a multitude of organizations, to include: the YMCA, the
Federal Council of Churches, the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, the Fellowship of
Socialist Christians, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Foreign Policy Commission of the
Americans for Democratic Action. Aside from these more recognizable organizations, Niebuhr
also interacted with a number of lesser known organizations, such as the Council for Social
Action of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Central Conference American Rabbis.16
Niebuhr also remained close with numerous leading figures. Some of the individuals who
interacted with Niebuhr include: Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, the Washington D.C.
National Presbyterian Church pastor Edward Elson, Hans J. Morgenthau, George Kennan,
evangelist Sherwood Eddy, and John Foster Dulles. Niebuhr counted many more individuals and
organizations as close contacts, yet this overview offers a snapshot of the web that Niebuhr
operated within.
Many of Niebuhr’s religious contacts kindled relationships with the theologian, pastor,
and professor earlier in his life. Through his work as a pastor in Detroit and a professor at Union,
16
Letter from Herman Reissig to Niebuhr, December 7, 1956, “Correspondence” Box 4,
“Com-Cu” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC; Letter from Abraham Klausner to Niebuhr, April 18,
1956, and letter from Niebuhr to Klausner, April 20, 1956, “Reinhold Niebuhr Papers” Box 2,
“Ce” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
171
Niebuhr met and interacted with many of the country’s leading religious figures. Most of
Niebuhr’s government, political, and international contacts were established later in his life from
posts that Niebuhr assumed ranging from Washington D.C. to Paris. Within Niebuhr’s wide
range of friends and coworkers, Niebuhr often operated in a leadership role. It is this defining
feature that separates Niebuhr from Oxnam and Graham. To be sure, Oxnam and Graham were
both at the forefront of their respective positions within Protestant Christianity. Niebuhr,
however, responded to invitations to assess situations and problems of national and international
significance more so than Oxnam and Graham.
Examining two periods of time in Niebuhr’s hectic and fast-paced professional life
underscores the wide-range of prominent contacts that Niebuhr maintained in his life. The first,
from the late 1940s, provides a glimpse into Niebuhr’s close working relationship with the U.S.
government. The second, further details Niebuhr’s ties with the offices of the State Department.
The State Department represented one of the main platforms that offered Niebuhr a large
audience. Prior to Eisenhower’s election, Niebuhr was the American public’s undisputed choice
as the most influential American Protestant theologian. He was also the top choice of the State
Department. Ever since his government-sponsored tour of Germany in 1946, Niebuhr had met
occasionally with the State Department’s Advisory Commission on Cultural Policy in Occupied
Territories. This same year, Allen Dulles nominated Niebuhr for membership in the Council on
Foreign Relations—a coveted and elite honor. Niebuhr joined George Kennan’s Policy Planning
Staff by invitation in 1949 and served as a member of the American delegation to the Fourth
Conference of UNESCO in Paris in September of the same year. Upon his return, he met with
Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Acheson’s assistant, Marshall Shulman. Weeks after
meeting with Acheson, Niebuhr found out that he was being considered for the presidency of
172
Yale University. Strong letters of recommendation from Chester Bowles and Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. were not enough to overcome the eventual decision to select Harvard historian A. Whitney
Griswold as Yale’s next president.17
The State Department sought Niebuhr’s insight again in 1953. Niebuhr’s collection of
political and theological articles, published as Christian Realism and Political Problems by
Scribners caught the eye of State Department officials shortly after its publication. In particular,
State Department Ideological Advisory Staff member Bertram Wolfe found a chapter of
Christian Realism and Political Problems especially useful. The chapter “Why is Communism
So Evil?” was a recycled and retitled version of “The Evil of the Communist Idea,” which
appeared in the New Leader just before the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in June of
1953. On June 30, 1953, just ten days after the Rosenbergs were killed, Niebuhr’s recent
publication that detailed the evils of communism and also revealed Niebuhr’s remarkable level
of anti-communism was broadcast over the radio airwaves as “ideological Special No. 256.” The
State Department’s Wolfe found the broadcast especially helpful in alerting the communist threat
to Americans. Wolfe noted that the broadcast was “widely used by our language desks and
greatly appreciated by them.”18
One of the greatest instruments of Niebuhr’s expansive reach into the lives of the
American public and government leadership was his journal, Christianity and Crisis. Published
from 1941 to 1993, Niebuhr’s journal was founded in the midst of WWII. It assessed some of the
most important religious and social issues of the time in, more often than not, a typical
Niebuhrian, realist and neo-orthodox fashion. It represented a platform for opinions from
17
Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987),
238-239.
18
Ibid., 255.
173
individuals such as Paul Tillich, George Kennan, and Hans Morgentheau, but also as a vehicle
for Niebuhr’s own thought and rise to prominence.19
Along with Niebuhr’s other journal, Christianity and Society, which garnered a fraction
of the subscriptions that the more influential Christianity and Crisis did, Christianity and Crisis
provided Niebuhr an outlet to postulate his perspectives of the Cold War, Christianity, morality,
and international relations. Niebuhr’s opinions were highly valued in a number of circles and his
forays into founding and editing academic journals greatly enhanced his name recognition.
Niebuhr’s journal publications also enhanced national acknowledgement of the theologian as one
of the leading religious consultants on foreign policy, global affairs, and Christianity’s role in the
world.
During the years of the early Cold War, Niebuhr was recognized as a respected
commentator on American life. He was the embodiment of a public intellectual. He drew
accolades and deference from some of the greatest theologians and pastors of his time. He was
also sought out in the post WWII years frequently from many of the most important government
leaders in America. His exposure to the American public through various media channels
maintained his air of legitimacy on topics such as theology, international policy, American
attitudes, and religious life. Niebuhr’s world was one crafted, intentionally, as a result of his own
passions. His invitations to international meetings, arguments in several journals and books,
interviews on television and radio, and opinion pieces in newspapers established his place as a
respected elder public commentator. His vast network of high-profile professional contacts, the
19
For an examination of how Christianity and Crisis achieved a level of influence that
far exceeded its circulation numbers, see Mark Hulsether, Building a Protestant Left:
Christianity and Crisis Magazine, 1941-1993. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999).
174
impact of his written arguments, and his sustained media coverage both supported and
distributed Niebuhr’s world view throughout the 1950s.
Tension in Protestant America
This chapter describes the context of Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam’s respective roles
within the American Protestant community. It does not suggest that all denominations, churches,
groups, or Protestant individuals were alike in their perspectives on religious or secular matters.
In fact, this was not the case at all. The rapid changes occurring across the face of Protestant
Christianity demonstrates as much.20 Rarely were the majority of America’s churches in
agreement on any matter. Indeed, in many cases, the opposite occurred. The largest and most
prominent of America’s religious groups were at odds on a host of matters. The NCC, the NAE,
and many other religious groups often held differing theological views, opposing political views,
or a combination thereof. These differences often played themselves out privately. In some
instances, these groups publicly aired their disagreements. But, like Niebuhr’s Neo-Orthodox
theological perspective and pragmatic, liberal approach to politics, Graham’s evangelistic mode
20
For a general overview of large-scale changes to Protestant Christianity in America
after World War II, see Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988), Patrick Allitt, Religion in America Since 1945: A History
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), Raymond Haberski, God and War: American
Civil Religion Since 1945 (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2012), Matthew Hedstrom,
The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex:
America's Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), William Inboden III, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 19451960: The Soul of Containment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Kevin Shultz,
Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to its Protestant Promise
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), Jason Stevens, God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual
History of America’s Cold War, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
175
of Christianity and right-of-center approach to politics, and Oxnam’s theologically liberal
Methodism and liberal politics, the most important religious organizations in America differed as
a result of the widespread and competing views of society. Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam were
the standard bearers of their particular facet of Protestant Christianity in a time when the strands
that they represented dominated America’s religious life. Many of the organizations discussed
here were, in one way or another, connected to the theology and worldview of Niebuhr, Graham,
and Oxnam. And like Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam, these groups clamored for a leading
position among Protestant Americans. In several examples, this included pointing out why the
competition had it wrong.
The struggles of the NCC represent one example of the friction that existed between
religious bodies in the 1950s. The NCC felt strong opposition from many corners throughout the
1950s. In most instances, perceived attacks came in the form of outsiders’ opposition to the
theological underpinnings of the NCC’s larger body of members or particular stances that the
NCC took on particular issues of national attention. The NCC was quick in its dissemination of
communication regarding anti-NCC sentiment. Administrative Secretary Philip Landers
circulated a memorandum to members of the NCC executive staff after being alerted to negative
remarks from the NAE. Landers reminded NCC leadership not to attack “anti-ecumenical”
groups in retaliation, regardless of the level of provocation. In reminding NCC executives of
standing policy, Landers provided general information on the NAE, to include its office
locations, history of attacks on the NCC, and general overviews of its leadership—among them
176
the president of the NAE, Evangelical Mission Covenant Church of America pastor Dr. Paul S.
Rees, who, Landers noted, “uses the RSV in his pulpit.”21
The NCC handled perceived threats well due to a number of factors. Most of all, the NCC
maintained a well-established familiarity with opposition. While a large portion of public attacks
came from individuals and organizations that aligned themselves with the political and
theological right, this was not always the case. The Christian Century, which was popular among
those more theologically liberal, ran editorials that rebuked the NCC and FCC’s favorable
positions on the use of nuclear weapons in Korea.22
Along with the groups that serve as the focus of this chapter, many other religio-political
groups clamored for a hearing in the 1950s. Many were holdovers from the 1930s and 1940s that
still maintained the relevance of their pre-WWII objectives. Others were more political in scope,
but still included some of the most recognizable Protestant leaders within their ranks. Examples
of such groups include: American Christian Palestine Committee, American Committee for
Cultural Freedom, American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, American
League for Peace and Democracy, American League Against War and Fascism, Christian
Action, Church League for Industrial Democracy, Methodist Federation for Social Action,
National Council of Soviet-American Friendship, National Religion and Labor Federation, and
United Christian Council for Democracy.
Within these organizations, and organizations like them, one could find Protestant leaders
from Niebuhr and Oxnam to Union Theological Seminary President Henry P. Van Dusen,
21
Philip Landers, memo to “Members of Executive Staff,” April 19, 1954, “NCC Special
Topics, 1951-1970” Box 6, “N, O” Folder, PHS.
22
See Inboden, 56.
177
Presbyterian minister and FCC Secretary Samuel McCrea Cavert (1888-1976), and Harry
Emerson Fosdick, the embodiment of the theological liberalism of the 1920s and 1930s,
participating or operating in a leadership role.23
Over the course of the 1950s, the three leading strands of Protestant Christianity became
more pronounced in their dominance over the landscape of American religion. The evangelistic
strand, personified by Billy Graham, realized the growth of its impressive organizational
infrastructure through the efforts of the NAE and its many outreach projects. Some of these NAE
initiatives include: The Chaplains Commission (1944), World Relief (1944), and the Evangelical
Foreign Missions Association (1945-later renamed Evangelical Fellowship of Mission
Agencies). The theologically liberal wing of Protestant Christianity in America was realized in
the actions of Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, though the wing lacked a clear and recognizable
leader. Theologically liberal Protestants enjoyed their reign over Protestant membership for
much of the first half of the twentieth century and expanded in several forms: denominational
schools, hospitals, and colleges, multi-denominational organizations, and multi-naitonal groups.
The Neo-Orthodox branch of Protestant Christianity, led by Niebuhr, challenged the theological
underpinnings of its rival Protestant groups by focusing on the relevance of sin in humanity. But
these three strands of Protestant Christianity did not represent the sole groups in existence during
the years of the Eisenhower Administration. Indeed, several fringe groups challenged the
followers of the major Protestant groups by appealing to the fears and concerns of the early Cold
War years in ways that surpassed those of Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam.
23
American Council of Christian Laymen, “How Red is the Federal Council of
Churches?” pamphlet, 1949; letter from Niebuhr to Mrs. Elbert Carpenter, November 21, 1955;
letter from Niebuhr to National City Bank, February 11, 1952; “Reinhold Niebuhr Papers” Box
2, “AM,” “Christian Action,” “American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Inc., 1951-1956,”
and “Christianity and Society, 1952-1953” Folders, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
178
Carl McIntire’s ACCC and ICCC both made a splash when they were conceived and
unleashed on the American public. Likewise, other groups, such as Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian
Anti-Communist Crusade represented a pull to the right that became apparent in the 1950s. The
seedbed of politically conservative thought that reared its head in the 1964 political campaign of
Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) and the pages of William F. Buckley Jr.’s (1925-2008) National
Review magazine in the late 1950s and 1960s grew out of the anti-communist paranoia of some
of these fringe groups of the 1950s. Though these groups fell short of the impact of the three
facets of Protestant Christianity that remain central to this dissertation, they, nevertheless,
managed to capture the attention of many Protestant Christians.
Aside from McIntire’s fundamentalist religious networks and Fred Schwarz’s
organization, the John Birch Society (JBS) represented one of the fastest growing anticommunist groups in America in the 1950s. Robert Welch (1899-1985) founded JBS after
retiring from his career as candy maker. The son of poor, fundamentalist Baptist parents, Welch
worked as a businessman for most of his adult life. After retiring from his brother’s James O.
Welch Company in 1956, Welch focused his retirement years on spreading conservative
messages through speeches, tracts, and, eventually, the JBS. Founded in Indianapolis in late
1958, Welch, eleven other men, and their newly created JBS, acted as a modern jeremiad—
warning the nation against communism and the spiritual battle of the Cold War. Welch saw the
Cold War as a religious war. Indeed, the name of his organization reveals as much. Captain John
Birch was a Christian missionary who joined the military during WWII and died at the hands of
Chinese Communists in August of 1945. Welch believed that Birch signified “everything that the
Communists hate.” Welch and the John Birch Society found Birch’s murder representative of a
final straw. Welch determined, “With his death and in his death the battle lines were drawn in a
179
struggle from which either Communist or Christian-style civilization must emerge.”24 While this
perspective does not veer too far from the already-present anti-communist mood in America at
the time, the JBS, and organizations like it, presented a pull to the right for many Americans for
other reasons.
The JBS grieved the passing of an older and more fundamentalist Christian age in
America. Spiritual decline presented ominous problems for JBS members, as the Cold War raged
on in a spiritual framework. Aside from its anti-communist stance, the JBS made a name for
itself in the 1950s and 1960s by organizing campaigns to remove books, such as The Last
Temptation of Christ, from the bookshelves of public libraries. Even though some of JBS’s
tactics proved too much for many political and religious conservatives, such as the group’s
decision to label President Eisenhower a communist, the organization complicated the scene of
American Protestant thought with regard to the Cold War. Even after the JBS began to fade from
the public view, traditional and moderate political conservatives continued to expand their ranks
with Protestant Americans who were increasingly concerned with the Cold War and America’s
national moral decay.25
Taken together, these outsider organizations were largely all based upon anti-communism
and appealed to Protestant Americans. In some instances they fueled the message of Billy
Graham’s ministry in stoking the anxieties of Americans in the 1950s. In other examples, they
enhanced the positions of Graham, Oxnam, and Niebuhr in taking positions that fell outside of
24
Robert Welch, The Life of John Birch: In the Story of One American Boy, the Ordeal of
His Age (Chicago: Regenery, 1954), 86-110, also quoted in Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial
Complex, 204-205.
25
Box 406, Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Records as President (White House Central Files),”
1953-1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower Archives, Abeline, KS. See also Herzog, The SpiritualIndustrial Complex, 205.
180
mainstream perspectives of Christianity, the Cold War, and foreign policy. These groups, such as
the Anti-Communist Christian Crusade, ACCC, ICCC, and JBS, all grew over the course of the
1950s and collectively represented the thin slice of American religious life which fundamentalist
Christians came to occupy in the 1950s. They illuminated the preponderance of evangelical,
Neo-Orthodox, and theologically liberal Protestant Christianity on the expansive stage of
American religion. Their existence also revealed the deep and very real sense of anticommunism that continued throughout the 1950s.
Conclusion
The American religious landscape maintained several unique factors over the course of
Eisenhower’s years as President. The growth of church membership and increase of large-scale
religious expression across the country could only be compared with the commonly known
Awakenings of prior centuries. The sudden and widespread interest in religion, generally, took a
different form than centuries past, however. The mixture of emotions associated with victory in a
world war, more acute and frequent habits in consumption, an increase in larger family sizes, a
fomenting civil rights atmosphere, and anxiety over the looming threat of nuclear war
constructed, shaped, and guided American perspectives on religion.26 Most Americans’ quality
of life coupled with the threat of an overseas foe gave greater currency to the notion of American
exceptionalism in the 1950s. The manifestation of civil religion during the years of the
Eisenhower Administration was an outgrowth of this attitude.
26
For a thorough discussion of American fears of the bomb, see Paul Boyer, By the
Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
181
While Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam were not overt propagators of the civil religion of
the 1950s, the effects of their actions and the actions of the groups that they identified with
greatly influenced the national religious temperament of the Eisenhower era. The subtle
influence of these three figureheads’ ideas was great. By dispersing their thoughts of the Soviet
threat, the Cold War, and America’s role in the world through a widespread, recognizable, and
influential array of channels, Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam demonstrated an impressive reach
across America. Moreover, these three men confirmed the religious dimension of the Cold War
for many through their consistent and regular acknowledgement of the Cold War as a battle
between one religious system versus another. These iterations continued as the Cold War was
waged by proxy in lands far from the shores of either America or the Soviet Union. Oxnam’s
support for Dulles’ foreign policy goals, Niebuhr’s discussions of Formosa, and Graham’s
sermons featuring communism and the anti-Christ as centerpieces continued throughout the
McCarthy witch-hunts, HUAC committee investigations, and aggressive turns in American
foreign policy.
These three faces of Protestant Christianity came to their respective public positions of
popularity because of the support and acknowledgement of a lifetime’s worth of relationships.
Acknowledging the major religious organizations and leaders of the 1950s provides a better
understanding of this depth of Graham, Niebuhr, and Oxnam’s large and eclectic potpourri of
influential networks. In examining this American religious landscape of the 1950s, one also
better understands the place that large, theologically liberal organizations, such as the NCC, held
with respect to those groups on the other end of the political and religious spectrum, such as the
ACCC. Identifying these organizations on a spectrum more easily categorizes and
compartmentalizes religion in the 1950s. It also illuminates the complexity of Protestant
182
Christianity as it existed in the 1950s. Understanding this picture of American religion speaks all
the more favorably of Niebuhr, Graham, and Oxnam’s respective abilities to capitalize upon and
drive the perspectives of their religious constituents. It also underscores the influence that foreign
policies of the day have on American life and, also, the influence that society has on foreign
policy.
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CHAPTER 8
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE PULPIT
Throughout American history, every generation has had patriotic individuals within its
ranks. More pointedly, Christian Americans have exhibited degrees of patriotism and even
nationalism since before the Declaration of Independence. The notion of love or support for
one’s country is not isolated to the context of the years that serve as the focus of this dissertation.
However, the reasoning behind the American public’s support for American policy during the
Eisenhower Administration is unique. The sources of patriotism were a product of global events.
Political parties, the larger American government, and large public institutions have long been
able to draw deeply from the well of Protestant support. American Protestant support for foreign
policy in the first decades beyond WWII, though, grew out of and was also precipitated by an
interesting combination of events. Generally, Protestant support for U.S. foreign policy during
Eisenhower’s tenure as president came as a result of civil religion, patriotism, and persuasion.
That is, Protestants exhibited a degree of their own agency in encouraging the foreign policies of
Eisenhower and Dulles during the nuclear stalemate of the early Cold War years. Yet, American
Protestants also responded to official government efforts that cultivated a strong anti-communist
sentiment.
This chapter examines support for America’s foreign policy directed toward the Soviet
Union during the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961) from the nation’s Protestant
churchgoers. In doing so, this chapter further solidifies Graham, Oxnam, and Niebuhr’s
respective positions atop the upper echelon of America’s Protestant body of Christians. It also
184
fleshes out the oftentimes-ambiguous political and religious positions of Protestants by exploring
the reasoning behind their relationship with American foreign policy. Succinctly, this chapter
argues that most Protestant Christians in America did support Eisenhower and Dulles’ Cold War
foreign policies due to the elevated level of civil religion in the nation, the heightened patriotic
sentiment in America, and the overtures from Washington D.C. that specifically sought to
favorably impact the American public’s support for national policy decisions.
Protestant Support for the Cold War
The general American post-WWII attitude is frequently described with the buzzword,
“anxiety.” The great majority of Americans were, indeed, living in an age of anxiety between
1945 and 1960 due to several factors. Yet, the very real sense of dread that existed over whether
or not World War III would strike unannounced was commonplace throughout the nation.
Considering this context, it is not difficult to imagine the willingness of most Americans to
support American foreign policy directed toward the Soviet Union—any foreign policy—that
might decrease the tensions inherent in a nuclear stalemate. By the time Eisenhower took office
in 1953, Americans were desperate for a noticeable decline in the Soviet-American standoff.
One of the great ironies of the progression of the Cold War remains how American
Protestant leaders of national reputation sought peaceful de-escalation of the Cold War, yet
supported more hawkish foreign policies put forth by Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John
F. Dulles. Massive retaliation, a term coined by Dulles in 1954 to describe the promise to use
America’s superior arsenal of nuclear weapons as a response to communist expansion, signified
nearly as daunting a proposal as the strategy of brinksmanship, which Dulles imagined as a game
185
of chicken played by superpowers.1 Yet, Dulles maintained an air of legitimacy and
respectability with American Protestants during his tenure as Secretary of State due to his
religious background. Based largely on a Presbyterian upbringing, Dulles was as open to
discussing disarmament with state officials, the wider public, and Protestant representatives as he
was the more aggressive policies that standout from the Eisenhower Administration. When his
ecumenical and Protestant beliefs coincided with his policy proposals, which occurred frequently
throughout his time as Secretary of State, Dulles very much seemed like the Dulles that
Protestant Americans adored. Due to a number of factors, Dulles still commanded attention and
provoked discussion among Protestants when his policies took a more hardline turn.
The foreign policies unveiled during Eisenhower’s two terms in office sustained
continued support over the course of years for several reasons. First, Protestant Americans, in the
main, went along with these policies. There were objections, to be sure, but overall, the
American Protestant community continued to stay on board with Eisenhower’s Cold War
leadership. This is demonstrated in the actions and words of Protestant leaders across the
theological spectrum. Second, President Eisenhower actively and intentionally sought out
support for official government policies through a variety of channels. Eisenhower put the power
of the federal bureaucracy to work in building broad support for his Cold War agenda early and
often. Moreover, Eisenhower and Dulles each committed to seeing their policy objectives
through over and above the institutional tools that they had set in motion. Each man made
personal efforts to bolster support from Americans, especially the Protestant demographic, in
growing public support for Cold War foreign policy.
1
Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith (New York: Alfred P. Knopf,
2012), 460.
186
The Protestant community displayed its own willingness to trust in Eisenhower’s plan for
navigating the Cold War. From the theological left to the more fundamentalist, theological right,
Protestants repeatedly expressed a dedication to the policies of the Eisenhower White House.
Fundamentalist leaders such as Billy James Hargis and Fred Schwartz were entirely accepting of
the federal government’s use of religion to frame the Cold War. In fact, these men of prominence
on the theological right flourished in their own careers because of it. Perhaps Carl McIntire,
more than any other fundamentalist Christian, serves as the best example of theologically
conservative Protestants fully supporting foreign policy directed toward the Soviet Union in the
early Cold War.
As discussed in previous chapters, McIntire founded his own church during the years of
the Great Depression and published a weekly newspaper, the Christian Beacon, before beginning
a daily radio program in the 1950s. McIntire went on to found the American Council of Christian
Churches (ACCC) in 1941 and the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) in 1948.
These bodies represented a theologically conservative alternative to the ecumenical,
theologically liberal work of the Federal Council of Churches (later the National Council of
Churches) and the World Council of Churches. Although McIntire, his radio program, and his
larger bodies of conservative, Protestant organizations heavily scrutinized the theological
underpinnings of theologically liberal Protestants, anti-communism remained at the core of his
rising public profile’s momentum. Anti-communism also represented a shared sentiment across
the theological spectrum of Protestants. McIntire’s battle against theologically liberal Protestant
individuals and institutions was an amalgamation of McIntire’s rejection of theological
liberalism and his deep-seated sense of anti-communism. Within this mindset, McIntire, and his
many followers across the nation, departed with Protestants to his left on the theological
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spectrum on nearly every matter, except for a hawkish, anti-communist foreign policy. McIntire
opposed Dulles’ appointment as Secretary of State initially considering Dulles’ theologically
liberal Presbyterian background, however, as McIntire’s attention shifted toward those he
deemed communist sympathizers within America’s largest institutions (and his lack of negative
commentary on Dulles’ foreign policies) McIntire gradually settled down his opposition to
Eisenhower’s first Secretary of State.2
Like McIntire, Bishop Oxnam also warmed up to Dulles and his State Department
policies. Before Eisenhower was elected in 1952 and Dulles became Secretary of State in 1953,
Oxnam was already pondering what his large, Methodist body of Christians could do to
contribute to America’s Cold War efforts. “There seems to be a great fatalism sweeping across
the nation, and the feeling that this is inevitable. Perhaps it is,” Oxnam confided to his diary in
1951. “There must be some way to reach the minds and hearts of men so far we haven’t found it.
Perhaps this is the greater reason for the religious agencies; we’ve got to be a lot wiser, a lot
more courageous, and a lot more aggressive.”3 In 1953, Oxnam determined that atomic bombs
were not the answer to the Cold War.4 This hesitancy toward more aggressive foreign policies
changed over the course of Eisenhower and Dulles’ time in their respective offices, however. By
1955, Oxnam argued against a pacifist approach to the Cold War by outlining his own threepoint foreign policy. In front of an overflow crowd of 11,000 at the First Methodist Church in
San Diego, Oxnam disagreed with his pacifist debater, Dr. Henry Hitt Crane (1890-1977) in
offering his blueprint for America’s Cold War policy:
2
Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against
Communism in the Early Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 211.
3
Oxnam diary entry, January 6, 1951, Box 20, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
4
Oxnam diary clipping, December 5, 1953, “Force is not the Answer to World Crisis,”
Owensboro, KY Messenger, Box 22, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
188
1—We must provide insurance against another world war. A strong army will
serve to avert an attack.
2—We must demonstrate the good fruits of freedom, thus undermining despots by
contrast.
3—We must play a major part in the effort to develop backward areas, thus
creating new allies.5
Over time, a combination of Oxnam’s close personal relationship with Dulles, Oxnam’s
recognition from the White House on several occasions, and Oxnam’s own perspectives on
communism and the Cold War shifted the Methodist Bishop’s stance on appropriate foreign
policy during the Eisenhower Administration. Though Oxnam advocated for discussions of
peace more frequently after Dulles’ departure from the State Department, his willingness to
garner Protestant support for the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policies of the 1950s are notable.
Having considered figureheads of the right and left ends of the theological spectrum, it
appears practical that Protestant Christians that fell somewhere in the middle also agreed with
and supported America’s Cold War foreign policy toward the Soviet Union under Eisenhower’s
watch. This was the case. Personified by Billy Graham, Evangelical Protestant Christians also
backed Eisenhower and Dulles’ foreign policy strategy. By linking America’s role in the Cold
War to messianic prophecy, Graham, like many evangelical, Protestant Christians, identified the
United States as a democratic, positive, and Christian nation engaged in a high-stakes standoff
with an evil foe. In defining the Soviet Union with such terms, Evangelical Protestants gave wide
leeway to the architects of foreign policy directed toward the Soviet Union.
5
Oxnam diary clipping, January 28, 1955, “Opposing Views on ‘Way to Peace’ Aired by
Methodist Opponents,” San Diego Evening Tribune, Box 24, Oxnam Collection, LOC.
189
Based in fear of a nuclear holocaust, much of Graham’s Cold War rhetoric resonated with
an American public that was genuinely afraid of Soviet capabilities and intentions. While
Graham largely neglected to offer his specific positions on American foreign policy, he did
occasionally meet with top government officials after concluding his overseas tours. He also lent
the Eisenhower Administration his aid in bringing Protestant Christians on board with
policymakers’ plans for navigating the Cold War. As mentioned in Chapter Four, Graham
assured President Eisenhower that he would do his best “in selling the American public”
Eisenhower’s foreign policy decisions.6 The American public needed little in the way of
persuasion, however. Many Graham-rally attendees accepted Graham’s characterizations of the
Cold War with rousing applause. When Graham described communism as a religion against
God, “motivated by the Devil himself,” his listeners tended, more often than not, to
wholeheartedly agree.7
The larger, evangelical support for foreign policy evident in Graham’s friendly audiences
and Graham’s enduring success as an evangelical found in this example can be attributed to the
climate of the Cold War. Graham was incredibly aware of the context in which he preached.
William Martin, Graham’s leading biographer, has best described this as Graham’s having been
“geared to the times.”8 The popular evangelist preached the Gospel against the backdrop of the
Cold War throughout the 1950s. In doing so, he reciprocated the fears of many Americans, while
6
Letter from Billy Graham to President Dwight Eisenhower, May 10, 1954. Presidential
Correspondence: Dwight David Eisenhower, 1952-1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library.
7
Graham quoted in Martin Marty, Modern American Religion: Under God, Indivisible,
1941-1960. vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 151-152 and Andrew Preston,
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, 469.
8
William Martin, A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William
Morrow and Company, Inc.), 89; With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in
America (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 25.
190
simultaneously reinforcing negative connotations of both communism and the inhabitants of the
Soviet Union. These repeated characterizations of communism as the work of the anti-Christ
helped evangelical, Protestant Americans more-readily support aggressive and hawkish foreign
policies throughout the 1950s. While working as a source of reference for evangelical Christians
in fleshing out their Cold War enemy, Graham also reinforced many of the government’s own
propaganda efforts which sought to paint the Soviet Union in the most unflattering light possible.
As represented by several figures, Protestant Christians had several men in leadership
roles encouraging support for Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policies. McIntire, who represented a
thorn in the side of Eisenhower, voiced his support for official anti-communist efforts of the
1950s to his theologically conservative faction of American Protestants. Graham encouraged his
large flock to recognize the evil of the Soviet Union’s anti-Christian way of life. Even Oxnam, a
theologically liberal Protestant supported foreign policies of the 1950s privately and publicly.
While Niebuhr did much to offer a Christian interpretation of international affairs, he stood apart
from his fellow churchmen in offering a realist approach to managing foreign affairs. Having
split from theologically liberal Christianity—to include pacifists—in the 1930s, Niebuhr
examined Cold War strategy from the vantage point of a Christian willing to engage in war.
Throughout the 1950s, Niebuhr used his position as the face of Neo-Orthodoxy in
America to his advantage. Though his support for foreign policy is difficult to pinpoint,
Niebuhr’s work suggests that he maintained his large following by deploying criticism of current
affairs in a language steeped in the idea of original sin. Scholars, in some cases, have found
Niebuhr an apologist for American democracy and anticommunism—a typical characterization
of many midcentury consensus intellectuals. Niebuhr was more complicated than this, though.
He did operate as a conventional cold warrior in some aspects, yet he remained loyal to applying
191
his own understanding of original sin to international problems of justice and peace in a way that
sometimes contradicted his articulation of anti-communism and the Cold War.9
His perspectives on major developments of the Cold War, from Khrushchev’s rise to
power to the Hungarian uprising were followed closely in large, popular publications. His status
as a public intellectual afforded him this vast following. Yet, the relationships that he had
developed over a lifetime also endeared many Protestant leaders to Niebuhr’s takes on current
events. In his thirty-two years of work at Union, for example, Niebuhr was responsible for the
training of at least two generations of seminary students. Many of these carried Niebuhr’s
Christian Realism and Neo-Orthodoxy forth into the coming decades. His influence upon these
students that went on to become America’s pastors, educators, and professionals was great.10
Coupled with a large, loyal following of intellectual disciples and a dedicated American public,
Niebuhr maintained the viability of his perspectives of the Cold War through his output of
publications in the 1950s.
Despite struggling with severe physical and mental health issues as the 1950s wore on,
Niebuhr continued to turn out publications in a variety of formats. Niebuhr’s major topics of
interest in such titles as The Irony of American History (1952), Christian Realism and Political
Problems (1953), and The Self and the Dramas of History (1955) took a turn away from the
theological and strictly toward the political with his publication of Pious and Secular America
9
For a discussion of Niebuhr’s thought and theology during the Cold War, see Andrew
Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy
Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2009), 57, 206n35; Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Harper and Row,
1987), 232-234, 247.
10
For a discussion of Niebuhr’s impact on American’s pastors, see Finstuen, Original Sin
and Everyday Protestants, 100-103.
192
(1958).11 The enduring Cold War and all of it’s social, political, and diplomatic manifestations
provided much for Niebuhr to dissect.
When Niebuhr did assess Cold War tensions, he often did so in a practical manner. As
previously discussed in earlier chapters’ consideration of Niebuhr’s stances on Stalin’s death and
the Formosa crisis, Niebuhr had the ability and the tendency to offer detailed suggestions to
specific international incidents. It is no wonder that Niebuhr found George Kennan’s “realism”
approach to foreign policy so refreshing in a government that Niebuhr felt had been haunted by
legalistic moralism since WWI.12 It was this ability of Niebuhr’s to place Cold War hostilities
within a broad, historical context, while simultaneously applying ideas of original sin and
specific strategic suggestions to specific foreign policy issues that legitimized his place within
the Protestant discussions of foreign policy in the 1950s.
Most American Protestants fell into the theological perspectives represented by the men
discussed above. Bishop Oxnam, Billy Graham, Reinhold Niebuhr, Carl McIntire, Billy James
Hargis, and Dr. Fred Schwarz represented the vast majority of Protestant Americans—from the
far left of the theological spectrum to the far right. Instances of their supporting foreign policy
are reflective of America’s larger Protestant body. The Cold War was a complex standoff that
featured many unknown variables and the discussion of strategies remained a prominent topic of
national discussion throughout the 1950s.
When these representative figures were not chiming in on how America should approach
communism and the Soviet Union, other formal organizations offered an alternative for Christian
11
For Niebuhr’s literary interests turning toward the political and cultural, see Fox,
Reinhold Niebuhr, 267.
12
Ibid.; 238.
193
Americans to gather information from. In addition to several groups’ ministries, publications,
rallies, and gatherings already discussed, the Foundation for Religious Action in Social and Civil
Order (FRASCO) represents yet another example of the God and country attitude that prevailed
under Eisenhower’s watch. Founded by National Presbyterian Church pastor Edward Elson and
Episcopalian rector Charles W. Lowry in 1954, FRASCO sought: “To unite all believers in God
in the struggle between the free world and atheistic Communism which aims to destroy both
religion and liberty.” FRASCO featured several well-recognized leaders, including Henry Ford
II, Herbert Hoover, Henry Luce, and Elton Trueblood. Within FRASCO one could find
representatives of big labor, mass media, big business, and political leadership. This snapshot of
an organization with representation that reached into nearly every corner of American life stands
as a clear demonstration of America’s desire to wage a religious battle against the forces of a
perceived evil enemy.13
Though it was extensive, support for national goals in the Cold War did not solely come
from Protestants themselves. This was not a one-way street. The initiative is recognizable in
many corners of the Protestant American community, yet, the support that Protestants displayed
for American foreign policy was also heavily courted from the U.S. government. Aware of the
possibility that the Cold War tension that was obvious between the Soviet Union and America
could continue on for the foreseeable future, elected officials in the United States government
launched several campaigns to shore up and solidify public support for its foreign policy
objectives. Not coincidentally, Eisenhower found Protestant Americans the most important
segment of society to target.
13
FRASCO information and mission statement quote from Jonathan Herzog, The
Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold
War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 162-163.
194
The U.S. Government As Tiller of the Protestant Soil
As a five-star general in the United States Army charged with leading the Allied Forces
in Europe as Supreme Commander in WWII, and later in 1951, the Supreme Commander of
NATO, Dwight D. Eisenhower understood the importance of public support for military
endeavors. As president, Eisenhower found larger public support for his approach to the Cold
War so important that he sought to influence the country’s backing for his forthcoming policies
directed toward the Soviet Union early on in his first year in the White House. As discussed in
the previous chapter, Eisenhower launched a multi-faceted strategy in 1953 that aimed at further
bolstering the already broad support that existed for Cold War foreign policy. Building off of the
religious characterization of the war inherent in both foreign policy document NSC-68 and
previous President Truman’s descriptions of Soviet tensions, Eisenhower introduced new efforts
toward framing the Cold War as a religious struggle against an evil enemy and reaching further
into America’s Protestant population. Through the work of the United States Information
Agency, Operations Coordinating Board, and “Atoms for Peace” program, Eisenhower brought
American Protestants further into his administration’s work toward foreign policy objectives.
Perhaps no other man was better suited for this task. Eisenhower maintained the image of
a president in a pastoral role throughout his two terms in office. By comforting his fellow
Americans, serving as a spiritual example, and providing ethical and wise leadership,
Eisenhower succeeded in drawing the framework of the Cold War and in intensifying the mood
of civil religion.14 Eisenhower went to work in this comingling of religion and politics in many
ways. The USIA and OCB represent two official government bodies that carried out
Eisenhower’s Cold War propaganda efforts.
14
Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency, 184-185.
195
Created in late 1953, these two entities facilitated American Cold War propaganda efforts
at home and abroad. Much of the USIA and OCB’s work contained heavy religious tones and
sought to cultivate widespread support for American efforts across the world. They played a
crucial role in rallying domestic support for foreign policy and also in projecting a favorable
image of America to the rest of the world. Along with Eisenhower’s approaches to international
diplomacy which included expanded trade through credits and loans, academic exchange visits,
and information programs, the president utilized programs such as the USIA, for example, in
America’s presence in Eastern Europe—setting up American bookstores, libraries, and reading
rooms. By working through a number of agencies, Eisenhower aimed to portray the Soviet Union
as antithetical to America by illuminating Soviet weakness, aggression, and danger.15
The USIA, OCB, and other domestic agencies received fresh marching orders from
Eisenhower by way of his “Atoms for Peace” campaign. Eisenhower introduced the overall
theme of “Atoms for Peace” during his December 8, 1953 address to the United Nations. This
speech, and subsequently, this program, was meant to provide a framework for peaceful
discussions around nuclear weapon control. Within this proposal, Eisenhower aimed to
demonstrate his willingness to work toward a peaceful solution to the nuclear stalemate between
America and the Soviet Union. This message was intended to resonate with the larger American
public—not least of these, the significant body of theologically liberal Protestants, which
contained the most significant number of pacifist Christians. In reality, “Atoms for Peace”
15
George Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 667.
196
contained more than a genuine effort to discuss nuclear arms with the Soviets and the
reassurance that Americans so desperately longed for. 16
An OCB document from January 8, 1954 reveals the propaganda efforts that spawned
from Eisenhower’s speech. While the White House desired both domestic and international
audiences to believe that Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” signified an olive branch, the OCB
exploited the president’s atomic proposal to portray the United States as the sole power
responsible and capable enough to peacefully develop atomic energy. The OCB attempted to
downplay recent peace-rhetoric posturing that the Soviet Union had demonstrated. The group
determined to keep America fixed in the minds of the world as the lone peace-seeking nation in
the Cold War. Indeed, in the months following Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech, the
OCB led a group working toward exactly that end. Aside from coordinating the mass
communication of American propaganda efforts, the OCB determined that realizing the full
effects of their propaganda efforts included “maximum repetition of the principal points over a
period of several months.”17
The OCB, USIA, “Atoms for Peace” program, international student and teacher
exchange, foreign credit and loan efforts, and information programs collectively made up the
Eisenhower Administration’s propaganda umbrella. To be sure, many of these programs were
beneficial to individuals and organizations across the world. However, the underlying motives
that most of these Cold War strategies carried represented a substantial piece of American Cold
War efforts. By leveraging psychological tactics in the tense Soviet-American standoff, the U.S.
16
Shawn Parry-Giles, “The Eisenhower Administration’s Conceptualization of the USIA:
The Development of Overt and Covert Propaganda Strategies,” Presidential Studies Quarterly
24 (Spring, 1994): 271.
17
Quoted in ibid.; 271.
197
government demonstrated remarkable aptitude in maneuvering the Cold War as it progressed.
The Eisenhower Administration worked through official agencies to present a very intentional
picture of America’s place in the Cold War. In doing so, it successfully persuaded multitudes of
Americans—to include Protestant Americans—that the United States was on the right side of a
high-stakes war against an evil foe.
Of course, these groups do not represent all of the Eisenhower Administration’s efforts
toward public outreach. The president utilized his own public image to further drive home his
incorporation of civil religion in the 1950s. Still the only president to begin an inaugural address
with a prayer, Eisenhower repeatedly took advantage of the many invitations to publicly speak
before Protestant audiences. In doing so, Eisenhower was able to repeat his characterization of
the Cold War, its stakes, and the looming enemy. Shortly after his first election in 1952,
Eisenhower spoke before the Freedom Foundation. Before this audience, Eisenhower claimed,
“Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I
don’t care what it is.”18 He conveyed the idea that national faith required a recognition of the
reality of God and America’s obligation to do God’s will.
During the American Legion’s “Back to God” program in February of 1953, Eisenhower
spoke of the need to fortify the country’s resolve in the battle against communism. As the
featured speaker of the “Back to God” presentation, Eisenhower followed two Protestant
ministers, Reverend Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) and Chaplain John B. Williams, and the
Vice President Richard Nixon, in a patriotic ceremony for which the NCC had secured free
airtime on NBC. Eisenhower would go on to use the annual “Back to God” program as a
recurring setting for his call to recognize America’s need for a religious foundation. Before the
18
New York Times, December 23, 1952, p. 16.
198
NCC in 1953, Eisenhower explained that the U.S. government was a “translation in the political
field of a deeply-felt religious faith,” again repeating the hallmarks of civil religion.19
Arguably more of an impact than the above instances combined, the National Prayer
Breakfast convened for the first time in February of 1953 at business magnate Conrad Hilton’s
(1887-1979) Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. Organized by Kansas Senator Frank Carlson
(1893-1987) and expanded in later years by Seattle-based Methodist minister Abraham Vereide
(1886-1969), the National Prayer Breakfast, touting an inaugural theme of “Government Under
God,” established itself as a steadfast bulwark in the nation’s civil religion panorama. In the
coming years, Eisenhower returned to the annual breakfast, Billy Graham served as the keynote
speaker, and the event grew in attendance and press coverage.20
During the 1957 Prayer Breakfast, Eisenhower was presented the desk and chair that he
used to write the prayer that was read at his inauguration in 1953 along with a plaque from hotel
owner Conrad Hilton. In front of the Prayer Breakfast audience, which had grown from fivehundred at the inaugural gathering to over one thousand at that year’s meeting, Eisenhower
reflected on the prayer that he wrote for his presidential inauguration:
I think that prayer is somewhat related to these Prayer Breakfasts. We can pray in
our quarters, but we can also come to gatherings occasionally…announcing to the
19
Eisenhower quote and speeches before religious bodies from Raymond Haberski, Jr.,
God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945 (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press),
36-40. For information on Eisenhower and the “Back to God” program, see Kevin Kruse, One
Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic
Books, 2015), 74-75.
20
“Bulletin of International Christian Leadership.” For detailed coverage of the National
Prayer Breakfast gatherings of the 1950s, see issues of “Christian Leadership,” “Bulletin of
International Christian Leadership,” and “”International Christian Leadership Bulletin” from
1953-1957, in box “Fellowship Foundation Newsletters, 1942-1970,” BGCA. On Senator
Carlson and Abraham Vereide’s roles in the National Prayer Breakfasts, see Kruse, One Nation
Under God, 77-81.
199
world that we come as laymen and meet, making the same acknowledgment that
was made in that prayer and doing exactly the same thing. We are telling people
that this nation is still a nation under God. This is terrifically important today. It
still is a nation founded on a religious faith with great concern for the sentiments
and compassion and mercy that Mr. Hilton so elegantly spoke about. That is what
we want others to think about when they think of the United States…I believe, if I
am not misquoting, that even the Bible says when a strong man is armed he
keepeth his palace. We intend to remain strong, but let us always do it with the
certainty that anyone who comes in integrity, observing the moral values that we
know are imbedded in this great religious faith, will be received as a friend and
taken with us down the road to future happiness.21
The larger national reaction to the National Prayer Breakfast’s calls for spiritual renewal and
recognition of God’s relationship with America represented another success in Eisenhower’s
appeals to the Protestant segment of the population during his administration’s maneuvering of
Cold War hostilities.
Collectively, the federal government’s Cold War propaganda efforts were intricate, multifaceted, and, overall, successful. By putting a highly mobilized propaganda engine in place,
Eisenhower and his administration effectively cultivated a widespread base of support for Cold
War foreign policy directed toward the Soviet Union. At the heart of this support was the large
group of Protestant Americans who recognized the Cold War as nothing less than a standoff
between good and evil. During the years of the Eisenhower Administration, the U.S. government
played a major role in defining the terms of the war for Americans. It also influenced the level of
support that Americans exhibited for its policies.
21
Eisenhower’s address to the National Prayer Group reprinted in “Christian
Leadership” bulletin. Vol. 11 No. 1. January, 1957. Box “Fellowship Foundation Newsletters,
1942-1970,” BGCA.
200
Conclusion
It is clear that public support for the Eisenhower Administration’s Cold War foreign
policies remained strong throughout the 1950s. This support was sustained from a combination
of government efforts, such as propaganda strategies, and Protestant backing, as represented in
this chapter by Niebuhr, Oxnam, Graham, and other leading Protestant figures. At the heart of
this support was the sense of fear that the Cold War instilled in many Americans. Government
policymakers kept a close eye on Soviet activity through a variety of channels during
Eisenhower’s terms in office. The United States government recognized the Soviet Union and
the threat of communism as their greatest challenge in foreign affairs during this timespan. The
American public grappled with the uncertainty of the Soviet Union’s nuclear intentions on a
daily basis in the post-WWII period. This fear drove government efforts toward and public
support for the foreign policies that guided America’s approach to the larger world throughout
the 1950s.
The fear of communism in general and nuclear war in particular drove American attitudes
of the Cold War throughout the 1950s. Even after Joseph Stalin’s death in March of 1953, Nikita
Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in 1959, and the general sense of eased tensions that set
in during the late 1950s across America, both the public and government preoccupation with the
containment of communism’s spread carried forth as a mainstay of American foreign policy.
James Schlesinger (1929-2014), who served as Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy,
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Director of the CIA, described this Soviet
threat as America’s “magnetic north” for foreign policy.22
22
James Schlesinger, “America and the World,” Foreign Affairs, 72 (1992/1993): 17.
201
The forms that Eisenhower and Dulles’ foreign policies took sustained continued public
support throughout Eisenhower’s time as Commander-in-Chief. This support was the product of
both the U.S. government as well as the American public rallying behind the religious
framework of the Cold War. As the final, concluding chapter describes, the ramifications of
America’s Cold War foreign policy in the 1950s were significant and long lasting within the
nation’s social, diplomatic, and spiritual ethos in the decades beyond.
202
CHAPTER 9
CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF PROTESTANTS AND THE
COLD WAR
While the landscape of America’s religious demographics underwent significant change
after WWII, most Protestant’s views of America’s foreign policy directed toward the Soviet
Union provided a shared, common adhesive that bound otherwise theologically diverse
Americans together. No single statistic serves as an explanation, but the larger picture of
Protestant attitudes collectively shows that the level of anti-communism and fear of nuclear
warfare drove a civil religion that allowed for robust Protestant support of U.S. foreign policy.
For example, Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade claimed 120,000 donating members and
boasted a mixture of anti-communist diatribes and fundamentalist Christian messages across four
hundred radio stations near the end of the 1950s.1 Bill Bright’s Campus Crusade for Christ was
warmly received over the course of Eisenhower’s years in office, enrolling substantial numbers
of students in its forty campuses across fifteen states. Campus Crusade for Christ was also
popular among its wealthy supporters, who welcomed the ministry’s anti-communist, proAmerica culture. At the same time, Youth for Christ enjoyed substantial success throughout the
decade, providing Bible instruction in high school clubs, summer camps, and youth conferences.
At the end of 1959, for example, Youth for Christ’s Capital Teen Convention at the National
Armory attracted roughly ten-thousand teenagers to Washington D.C. for the program’s
festivities. During the event, President Eisenhower was so moved by their presence, that he
1
Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against
Communism in the Early Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 208.
203
invited them onto the lawn of the White House to speak to them near the National Christmas
tree.2
Other examples of large-scale Christian support for national goals and anti-communist
foreign policy abound. Religious Americans found communism so threatening that seventyseven percent of church leaders and editors of religious publications that Billy Graham
personally surveyed favored the experience that Eisenhower possessed in the lead up to the 1952
presidential election. Surely, Graham’s sizeable following warmly received the evangelist’s
comparison of Eisenhower’s first talk on foreign policy to the Sermon on the Mount.3 Official
religious bodies also moved to political action out of anti-communist sentiment. Large,
interdenominational religious groups regularly adopted resolutions denouncing communism. For
example, the NAE, with over one-million members and roughly twenty-thousand churches,
adopted such a resolution in nearly every year of the 1960s.4
This support for foreign policy is also evident within Protestant Christianity’s standardbearers that serve as the focus of this dissertation. Bishop Oxnam was close enough to John
Foster Dulles to describe his efforts to the Secretary of State when attempting to “mobilize
opinion” for U.S. policy within his vast Methodist ranks.5 Reinhold Niebuhr characterized the
post-WWII mood of Americans when he explained in a letter to Harvard President James B.
Conant why evil, or destruction, must be done in order to accomplish good, such as defeating an
2
William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America
(New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 45.
3
Billy Graham claimed the sample size of his personal survey was nearly two hundred.
See ibid.; 32-33.
4
Angela Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of
Political Evangelism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 85. For a detailed list of NAE
membership statistics, see Appendix B.
5
Oxnam diary entry. between January 26, 1957 and February 26, 1957, Box 28, Oxnam
Collection, LOC.
204
evil force.6 Billy Graham confessed in a mass-publication pamphlet that “[Communism] carries
with it all the indications of anti-Christ.” Graham claimed, “Almost all ministers of the gospel
and students of the Bible agree that it is master-minded by Satan himself who is counterfeiting
Christianity.”7
This heightened religious mood was also felt in American Protestants’ missionary
endeavors. In 1952, approximately 18,000 North American missionaries were serving outside of
America’s borders. By 1960, this figure had risen to more than 29,000. The proportion of these
foreign missionaries that were sponsored by evangelical organizations had also risen—from 44
percent to 65 percent.8 In several different ways, the American Protestant community was
prepared and willing to go to war with an evil foe that lurked across the oceans, threatening the
very nature of American democracy.
The hawkish foreign-policy views of many Protestants were, in fact, the majority opinion
throughout America’s churches in the 1950s. Yet they were not unanimous. Pacifist Christians,
including those that participated in the Fellowship of Reconciliation and those civil rights leaders
that preceded the large-scale movement of the 1960s, such as A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979),
James Farmer (1920-1999), and Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), frequently demonstrated a
nonviolent approach to conflict and resistance. However, many theological liberals such as G.
Bromley Oxnam regularly moved away from pacifism as anti-communist rhetoric that
characterized the 1950s grew more popular. Many theologically liberal Protestants were able to
6
Letter from Niebuhr to James Conant, 1955 or 1956. “General Correspondence” Box 2,
“Conant, James B.” Folder, Niebuhr Papers, LOC.
7
Graham, “Christianism vs. Communism,” Pamphlet, 1951. “Duplicates by and about
Billy Graham” Box. BGCA.
8
Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since
World War II (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 182.
205
make the shift from a message of peace to one incrementally more aggressive in tone, which
took the form of international cooperation and containment, because of the tremendous weight of
the Holocaust coupled with the rise of civil religion in America. A minority of Christians,
though—namely Mennonites, Quakers, and other historic peace church members—retained an
anti-war approach to the Cold War. Perhaps best personified by Congregationalist minister
(raised within the Dutch-Reformed Church) and peace activist A.J. Muste (1885-1967), this
small minority of Christians that fell outside of the anti-communist mainstream vociferously
objected to America’s role in the context of the Cold War.9
Because of the context of the times, the major thrust of Cold War foreign policies of the
1950s prevailed into the following decades. When President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
announced to the American public on the night of October 22, 1962 that American U-2 spy plane
photographs taken over Cuba revealed Soviet missile installations, the relationship between
foreign policy and apocalypticism was reaffirmed in the eyes of many Americans.10 A deepseated thread of America’s chosen place in the world remained in place through the 1960s and
1970s. Intertwined with this strand of thought was the policy of containment. True to the notion
of America’s place as a beacon of light atop a hill in a dark world, this guiding foreign policy
acknowledged America’s religious role in the international community. It did so for the duration
of the Cold War. From the close of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or roughly 1947 to 1989,
the containment of communism in all of its manifestations guided thinking, discussion, and
9
Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and
Diplomacy (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2012), 494.
10
Angela Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares, 112, 114.
206
action among the American public and policymakers.11 First officially outlined in National
Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), the policy of containing the spiritual, political, and
military challenge that communism posed lent a religious element to American foreign policy for
the following forty years.12 This idea is apparent in America’s actions in Vietnam throughout the
1960s and 1970s as well as in the rhetoric employed by President Ronald Reagan when posturing
against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The three men that serve as the focus of this dissertation were highly present at this
rapidly blending intersection of foreign policy and religion during the years of the Eisenhower
Administration. Niebuhr, Oxnam, and Graham’s legacies stretch far beyond their actions during
this episode in American history. Oxnam passed away in March of 1963 and Niebuhr died in
June of 1971. Neither heavyweight of Protestant Christianity was able to see the aftermath of the
early years of the Cold War’s effects on American policy and religious life. Niebuhr is largely
remembered for his theological contributions, his ability to articulate his understanding of sin to
the American public, and his role as a public intellectual. Oxnam, though less well known, is
typically remembered as a successful Methodist Bishop who oversaw substantial growth in the
Methodist Church’s education efforts, missionary endeavors, and church membership roles.
More than anything else, though, Oxnam personifies, for many, the defiance that Senator
McCarthy and the Congressional HUAC Committee evoked from the politically and
theologically liberal segment of American society. His testimony in front of the HUAC
Committee remains the most publicly followed incident of his life. Billy Graham, of course,
went on to outlive both Oxnam and Niebuhr. His ministry remains his legacy. Graham’s work as
11
For discussion on communism in the Soviet Union as the chief threat to freedom
around the world, see Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1987), 153-159.
12
Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, 422-430.
207
an evangelist is the primary point in his life’s work. Obviously, many have looked closely at
Graham’s role in America’s history of race relations, politics, business, and evangelism. His
relationship with President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) and his stance on Vietnam remain points
of criticism. Overall, however, Graham, like Niebuhr and Oxnam, retains a relatively positive
view of his life and his life’s work from the American public, scholars, and biographers.
In sum, the early Cold War years represent a time of major shifts in American life. Left
with many questions after the close of WWII, Americans faced new possibilities and new
challenges. An uptick in mass consumption, the growth of suburban residential areas, favorable
economic conditions, and the ease that many Americans found in attaining an acceptable
standard of living provided a level of satisfaction among many Americans. Average family sizes
increased as the baby-boom began and the resurgence of church membership demonstrated a
country enjoying the post-war world. At the same time, communism and the threat of nuclear
warfare posed fresh anxieties. The Civil Rights Movement gathered steam as the 1950s gave way
to the 1960s. New and lingering issues sprang into American life. It was within the early years of
the Cold War that America’s religious leaders found the American public ripe for guidance.
In assessing the perspectives of the standard-bearers of the three largest and most
influential strands of Protestant Christianity—Neo-Orthodoxy, liberal Protestant Christianity,
and evangelical Christianity—it becomes clear that the American religious landscape was
anything but united. Theological differences, political differences, and competition kept many
Protestant Americans at odds with one another over a host of issues. However, the combination
of anticommunist sentiment and civil religion worked as forces that brought Protestant
Americans together. Protestants were not uniform in their perspectives of U.S. foreign policy,
yet, as demonstrated by Niebuhr, Oxnam, and Graham, they denounced communism and—to a
208
degree—supported America’s efforts to combat the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence
throughout the course of the Eisenhower Administration. This support for foreign policy was
essential to the United States government and important to Christian Americans. Within the story
of Protestant support for American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union during the
Eisenhower Administration, one can also identify evidence for religious support for the military,
which represents a major American trend that transcends all American history. The level of
support that was on display in the mid-twentieth century, however, remained a fixture of
American religious life (despite being tested during the years of the Vietnam War) throughout
the second half of the twentieth century.
The context of the Cold War allowed Protestant Americans to enhance their political
power among American subgroups. This power was not truly streamlined and capitalized upon
until the years of what is commonly recognized as the culture wars—centered upon social
struggles over abortion, feminism, gay rights, and education—streamlined and gathered
evangelical Christians to the voting booths in large numbers beyond the 1970s. The prominence
that Protestant Christians achieved, as evident in their respective figureheads, pushed Protestant
values and opinions further into Americans’ understanding of what America was. Future
generations carried forth the religious values of Protestant Christians of the 1950s, general as
they were, and utilized them as foundational modes of understanding their world and their
culture.
209
APPENDIX A
Billy Graham Crusades from 1947-19591
Year
Location(s)
1947
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Charlotte, North Carolina
1948
Augusta, Georgia
Modesto, California
1949
Miami, Florida
Altoona, Pennsylvania
Los Angeles, California
1950
Boston, Massachusetts
Columbia, South Carolina
New England States Tour
Portland, Oregon
Minneapolis, Minnesota
1
Crusade information by year most easily accessible in Graham, Just as I Am, 11071114. Also, see “Timeline of Historic Events,” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
http://billygraham.org/news/media-resources/electronic-press-kit/bgea-history/timeline-ofhistoric-events/ (accessed September 14, 2015).
210
Atlanta, Georgia
1951
Southern States Tour
Fort Worth, Texas
Shreveport, Louisiana
Memphis, Tennessee
Seattle, Washington
Hollywood, California
Greensboro, North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina
1952
Washington, D.C.
American Cities Tour
Houston, Texas
Jackson, Mississippi
American Cities Tour
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Albuquerque, New Mexico
1953
Florida Cities Tour
Chattanooga, Tennessee
St. Louis, Missouri
Dallas, Texas
West Texas Tour
Syracuse, New York
211
Detroit, Michigan
Asheville, North Carolina
1954
London, England
Berlin, Germany
Copenhagen, Denmark
Düsseldorf, West Germany
Frankfurt, West Germany
Helsinki, Finland
Paris, France
Stockholm, Sweden
Nashville, Tennessee
New Orleans, Louisiana
American West Coast Tour
1955
Glasgow, Scotland
Scotland Cities Tour
London, England
Paris, France
Zurich, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland
Mannheim, West Germany
Stuttgart, West Germany
Nürnberg, West Germany
Dortmund, West Germany
212
Frankfurt, West Germany
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Oslo, Norway
Gothenburg, Sweden
Aarhus, Denmark
Toronto, Canada
1956
India and East Asia Tour
Richmond, Virginia
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Louisville, Kentucky
1957
New York City, New York
1958
Caribbean Tour
San Francisco, California
Sacramento, California
Fresno, California
Santa Barbara, California
Los Angeles, California
San Diego, California
San Antonio, Texas
Charlotte, North Carolina
1959
Melbourne, Australia
213
Auckland, New Zealand
Sydney, Australia
Perth, Australia
Brisbane, Australia
Adelaide, Australia
Wellington, New Zealand
Christchurch, New Zealand
Canberra, Australia
Launceston, Australia
Hobart, Australia
Little Rock, Arkansas
Wheaton, Illinois
Indianapolis, Indiana
214
APPENDIX B
National Association of Evangelicals Membership in 19531
Church
Number of Churches
Membership
Assemblies of God
6,362
370,118
Brethren in Christ
103
5,760
Christian Church of North America, Inc.
154
13,000
The Church of God
2,542
126,844
Church of the United Brethren in Christ
329
19,723
Churches of Christ in Christian Union
220
10,000
Congregational Methodist Church
160
11,189
The Evangelical Free Church of America
273
21,500
Evangelical Mennonite Brethren
15
2,000
Evangelical Methodist Church
No information available
Free Methodist Church of North America
1,212
48,954
General Six-Principle Baptists
3
280
Holiness Methodist Church
27
675
International Church of the Foursquare
577
78,471
Gospel
1
All information from the 1953 Yearbook of American Churches, the Apostles of
Discord, and the NAE’s United Evangelical Action listing. Cited from a condensed form in,
“Denominations that are Members of the National Association of Evangelicals,” April 19, 1954,
“NCC Special Topics, 1951-1970” Box 6, “N, O” Folder, “Exhibit 1 and 2,” PHS.
215
Church
Number of Churches
Membership
International Pentecostal Assemblies
96
5,000
Krimmer Mennonite Brethren Conference
9
1,593
Mennonite Brethren Church of
59
10,359
Missionary Bands of the World, Inc.
10
1,000
Missionary Church Association
75
6,175
(National Association of) Free Will
2,700
400,000
81
6,042
Oregon Yearly Meeting of Friends Church
51
4,636
Open Bible Standard Churches, Inc.
235
25,000
Pentecostal Holiness Church
1,030
43,150
Primitive Methodist Church of the U.S.A.
90
12,320
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North
75
5,174
United Holy Church of America, Inc.
365
26,451
United Missionary Church, Inc.
222
13,920
Wesleyan Methodist Church of America
940
34,213
Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc.
650
55,000
North America
Baptists
Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends Church
(Independent)
America
216
Church
Number of Churches
Association of Fundamental Ministers
Membership
NA
900
The Church by the Side of the Road
NA
5,500
Elim Missionary Assemblies
NA
4,000
Evangelical Mennonite Church of North America
NA
1,907
Evangelistic Tabernacle
NA
260
Grace Gospel Evangelistic Association
NA
15,000
Missionary Methodist Conference
NA
741
United Fundamentalist Church
NA
1,000
Conservative Congregational Conference
No information available
New England Evangelical Baptist Fellowship
No information available
Pentecostal Evangelical Church
No information available
Total:
18,665
and Churches
217
1,657,855
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